


Do You Believe in Magic?

by ArchetypeOfAdespota



Category: Undertale
Genre: 'I'm gonna make you cry with frustrated impotent rage' slow, A Mature Adult Relationship, A Plot (somewhere), And All the Poor Communication that Entails, Bunny Moms, Christmas Tree Mutilation, Classy Gentlemen, Diplomacy, Dog Poker, Fire-Husbando, Fluff, Gymnastics, History, Illustrations, Like really slow, Lore - Freeform, Magic, Multi, Rum N Cokes, SOUL Mechanics, Slow Burn, So much Lore, Souls, besties, foreign exchange, grad students
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-24 19:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6164635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchetypeOfAdespota/pseuds/ArchetypeOfAdespota
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where a grad student lucks into the best Study Abroad program of all time, learns magic, plays poker with dogs, develops a really confusing crush on a man made of actual fire, and at some point should probably write her thesis.</p><p>Set one year after the end of the game.</p><p>You may enjoy this fic if you like: painstakingly mapped out lore, development of magic systems, expansions on the culture of the underground and the characters therein, and dicks made of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The One Where Shay Ruins The Fancy Intro

**Author's Note:**

> Alright children. This is not your average fluff fic. This is gonna be an in-depth exploration of the lore and magic and world that Undertale set up but barely scratched the surface of. There will be LORE. There will be a MAGIC SYSTEM. Side characters will be given names and personalities. Shay is not a Reader, she is a fully independent person with her own personality and quirks, I'm just throwing her down a hole and watching her run around.
> 
> A few liberties have been taken with the setting, because c'mon. No one builds a house IRL like a SNES house. I like more than one room in my domicile thanks. That said: I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did hashing out the intricacies of Soul Physics with my friends.
> 
> Speaking of: Thanks to GlacierGrimm and Pexitron for dealing with my Lore fetish for extended periods of time.
> 
> Oh, and here's my tumblr. It's got pickitures of the characters if you like that sort of thing: http://archetypeofadespota.tumblr.com/

Beneath the shadow of Mt. Ebott, in the neutral zone bordering the worlds of Human and Monster, just beyond the great Gate that separates man from what had nearly been dismissed as myth, Shay Cassidy slams her fingers in a car door. She desperately hopes it isn't an omen.

The nail beds are already turning purple as she shoulders her allotted single backpack and pops her fingers into her mouth. Brea and Quinn are already yards ahead of her, finished and cleared past the secondary monster checkpoint where a massive armored cow-bat-man is gazing at her expectantly.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm coming!" Shay squeaks, scuttling to the counter and rummaging for her visa with her good hand, glancing at her classmates apologetically as she twists to check her backpack. Quinn sighs loudly and shifts a hand to his hip, looking away and gazing off towards the mountain pointedly. Shay rolls her eyes and locates her visa, in exactly the same pocket where she'd stowed it not five minutes ago at the human checkpoint, _of course_ , and offers it to the Customs Officer. "Here!"

Big brown cow eyes blink at her, before he holds out a furry hand.

"Let me see that." he booms. Shay glances down at the visa extended between them, then back up.

"Um..." Shay blinks. With a slow, ponderous movement the cow-bat reaches over the counter and gently tugs her injured hand away from where it's cradled against her chest, turning it over so the rapidly swelling fingers are visible. He scrutinized it for a moment, then _tsks_ and hovers his hand above it, carefully, before looking back up at her.

"May I?"

Shay stares dumbly at him for a minute before the realization of what he's asking sinks in, then nods excitedly, wide-eyed, and watches as he presses her hand between his own. There is a tingling sensation, like her hand has fallen asleep, and then he lifts away to reveal smooth, pale skin. Brea gasps quietly behind her, and Shay can nearly _feel_ the stars in her eyes as she pulls her hand back to inspect it. With barely a glance are her visa, the cow-bat slides it across the counter and smiles warmly at her. Shay beams back.

"Thank you!" she manages to force her lips out of a smile long enough to use her manners. The cow-bat chuckles and waves her through the checkpoint with a flourish.

"Welcome to Mt. Ebott."

 

 

 

The monster that greets them at the foot of the mountain is the most bizarre mixture of bubbly and clinically efficient that Shay has ever seen. Barely four feet tall, and covered in red fur and a smart yellow tracksuit, she pumps each of their hands with a crushing grip and a sweet, sharp-incisored smile.

"My name is Sable." she rattles off, "And we have a lot of ground to cover in the next hour. Literally, since the elevators from the bottom of the mountain aren't finished yet, so do try and keep up." With a whisk of her fluffy auburn tail she turns and scampers up the path cut into the mountain, already beginning to jabber over her shoulder as the humans are left to scramble up the path behind her. Shay gazes up the mountain to where the path disappears inwards hundreds of feet above their heads, already feeling a phantom ache in her calves.

"Now, I understand that each of you have a different specialization and area of study correct? So arrangements have been made for each of you to stay in the area you will most likely wish to study in. You've come at a very exciting time, all of you! The upper city construction won't be finished for years of course, but the tunnels to the surface have just been finished for Snowdin, Waterfall, and Hotland. The original entry through the palace is of course open to the public, but no doubt you won't want to walk the length of the underground every time you want a breath of fresh air!" Sable barely pauses for breath as she speaks, despite the steep incline of the path as they steadily wind up the side of Mt. Ebott. Brea slips on a bit of scree and whimpers as she looks over the edge to the forest already dozens of feet below. Sable hauls her to her feet with astonishing strength and without pausing her spiel and continues on undeterred. Brea is left to blink away her stupefied expression and begin to scrabble up the trail once more.

"Very few restrictions have been placed on the lot of you for the duration of your stay, you'll be glad to know. King Asgore believes it very important that you feel welcome here, like any monster citizen. This is a cultural exchange above all of course! We have been assured that the Monster students that have been sent to your home university will be treated just as well, so there's no need for any silly rules or fears about security breaches, yes?" Sable turns abruptly and fixes Quinn, who happens to be closest behind her, with a piercing gaze, pleasant smile still in place. Quinn backpedals to avoid colliding with their guide, swings an arm out to grasp at the cliff face when he nearly topples backwards.

"N-no of course not!" he pants. His face is flushed and red, thick black glasses sliding down his nose from perspiration, and he looks the absolute farthest thing possible from a diplomatic incident. Sables smile loses its edges, and she flicks her tail cheerfully.

"Of course not!" she chirps. "Onward and upward then." Shay skirts around her to the top of the incline, and stops, panting, just shy of the mouth of the tunnel, staring into it as the others clamber up behind her and catch their breath. The passage is spherical, perfectly so, ten feet tall at the top with polished smooth walls that shine in the golden light of the flames ensconced at regular intervals down the sides. The effect is more akin to a cathedral hallway than a mountain tunnel. Shay gawks down the tunnel to where it curves around a bend and winds down out of sight.

"This was just finished? How long did it take to make it? _How_ did you make it?" she breathes, prodding at the glassy walls, where individual stones and layered lines of sediment can be seen in the flickering light. Sable laughs at her side, making her jump and straighten up quickly. Quinn and Brea shuffle into the tunnel behind her, squinting in the dimmer light of the tunnel.

"Shay, yes? The history student? They told me you specialize in magical history, or what humans have of it." Sable smiles. Shay nods and looks back to the wall, embarrassed. She hasn't had much to work with, its true. Magic has been dead in the Overworld for more than four hundred and fifty years, with the death of the last great Sorcerer. Contemporary sources are understandably limited. Just one of many reasons she had competed so desperately for one of the limited exchange spaces. Sable runs a fluffy, clawed hand across the stone.

"Being underground for five hundred years, we got pretty good at digging tunnels with magic. This only took a month." her bright little eyes shadow for a moment. "King Asgore himself walked each tunnel as it was finished and set the flames. We don't have much cause to use them right now of course. But soon." her expression brightens. "And at least now we have the option. Plenty of monsters come up often, just to see the sunrise or sunset." With a last pat to the tunnel wall, Sable pivots and claps her paws together briskly.

"And so can you of course. Living underground is sure to be an adjustment." she sets back off down the tunnel. "First stop is Snowdin."

 

 

 

Shay immediately falls in love with Snowdin. When the tunnel ends, the ceiling simply drops away into a vaulted cavern a mile high, lit from within by a magic Shay is simply itching to learn the workings of. Frost crawls across the walls behind her, and glittering icicles stretch in a sharpened expanse above, wreathed at their bases in what she can only assume are snow clouds. Its cold enough that her breath forms a cloud when she breathes out. With a delighted laugh, she leaps out of the tunnel, skipping the steps down and landing directly in the snow below with a muffled thump and a crunch.

"This is unbelievable Sable!" she calls, squinting to examine the far wall of the cavern (which must be _miles_ away, she realizes with glee). "Did you carve all of this out, or was it naturally formed? How does the light work? How is there a weather cycle down here? How big is the cavern? Does it actually snow? How often does it snow? How-" a furry hand across her mouth halts the avalanche of questions before she can gather too much steam. Sable looks vaguely dazed.

"How about you hang on to those questions until we get you settled in and find someone who may actually know, alright? This is the town where you'll be living anyway."

Shays eyes brighten and she nods as Sable takes her hand away. The little group begins to pick their way down the slope and into the little village nestled into the trees a ways away. Quinn keeps muttering under his breath as he shuffles through the drifts. Shay manages to catch 'no one said anything about snow' and 'must be nice to have fur' before she rolls her eyes and ranges ahead to poke at the trees and the snow poffs and the cute little guard huts inexplicably filled with condiments while her companions lag behind. Sable chatters at them all the while, listing off interesting facts and useful trivia about Snowdin while they walk.

"The river is a common means of travel between the main areas of course, although it doesn't run all the way up to the capitol. You can just talk to the river person if you'd like a ride. Oh and Shay, the inn we've arranged for you to stay at is right next to the general store, so everything you need will be right there. They're run by a pair of sisters actually, lovely gals. Theres a restaurant towards the center of town, Grillby's its called. _Such_ a gentleman, Grillby. And there's the library of course, the reason you've been placed here. That would actually be a great place to start on those questions of yours, though I'm sure the local monsters would be pleased to field a question or two if they know it. And- oh, and here we are. This is your stop Shay."

Sable halts them at a cozy looking cabin style building on the edge of town, the sign on the front clearly marking it out as The Snowed Inn. Sable pulls a cell phone out of her pocket and checks the time, stows it away again with a wrinkle of her nose and a click of her tongue.

"I'm afraid we're slightly behind schedule, so I'm going to go ahead with the others and get them settled. Just head on in, Bunnabelle knows to expect you. She'll handle showing you around town and getting you unpacked. If the universe has been kind your luggage should have arrived this morning." Shay opens her mouth to protest being abandoned in a strange town without so much as a by-your-leave, but Sable is already turning away and shooing Quinn and Brea down the street, calling over her shoulder, "Oh, and I'll be back tomorrow to check on you and make sure you've got everything you need. Welcome to the Underground!"

And then Shay is alone.

With a deep breath, and a roll of her shoulders, she squares off against the carved wooden door and grasps the handle.

The scent of cinnamon and pine wafts out to greet her as she she tugs the door open and steps inside. A cheerful little bell jingles as the door swings shut behind her. The interior is bright and warm, a comfy looking waiting area in the corner, and two passages leading off behind the greeting counter. The left hand hall contains stairs going upwards, the right a set of doors propped open to reveal what looks like a kitchen. From around the side of the door a small fuzzy head pops out.

The little Rabbit squeaks at the sight of Shay standing awkwardly in the entry and dives back into cover around the corner. There is a clatter that sounds suspiciously like a dish being knocked over.

"Mom! Mom! She's here! Mom mom mom mom mommommommomom-"

Shay snorts a laugh and walks up to the front counter, slinging her backpack off and setting it at her feet. When no one appears to greet her after a moment, she rings the service bell next to the account book once, loudly, to punctuate the excited chatter still streaming from the kitchen.

"I'm coming, honestly, just a moment!" An exasperated sigh emanates from the stairwell as a matronly looking rabbit woman with creamy pale fur bounds down the stairs. She pauses to glance wryly at Shays hand, still poised over the bell, before striding to the kitchen doorway.

"Thats quite enough of that young man!" she scolds.

The rabbit child hops back into view just behind what is no doubt his mother, peering around her to get a better look at Shay. Shay waggles her fingers at him. The child's eyes go round.

"Howdy." she smiles. The rabbit woman turns back to the counter as her progeny squeals and ducks back into the safety of the kitchen.

"You must be Shay." she greets, "Its very nice to meet you dear. I apologize for Pippin, he's been so excited to meet you. Its all he's talked about for days. My name is Bunnabelle." she extends a cream furred hand for Shay to shake. Shay takes it with a chuckle.

"Its not a problem. My little cousins are the same way. Its nice to meet you Bunnabelle." she peers over Bunnabelle's shoulder to smile at Pippin, who is peeping around the doorframe again. "And nice to meet you too Pippin." she calls. Pippin squeaks again, but manages a little wave. Bunnabelle releases Shays hand and begins to shuffle through the papers on the desk.

"Now, your human government and the university sent along all of these... document things they wanted you to sign. Something about liability?" she pulls a sheaf of papers out of the back of the logbook with a rueful smile. "I'll be the first to admit I didn't understand half of what was on these, I just signed where it seemed like I should. They told me you would know what to do with them anyway." Shay takes the documents and pages through before signing the bottom with a sigh.

"Humans are really big on proper paperwork I'm afraid. At least, the lawyers are." Bunnebelle takes them back and tucks them back under her datebook, dropping the heavy tome over the top of them with a thump.

"Well, now that the formalities are out of the way!" she chirps, "How about I show you to your room, and then I was hoping you would join us for dinner. I'm sure you have plenty of questions to ask about the area." Shays eyes light up at the mention of questions.

"That sounds _great_."

The room Bunnebelle shows Shay to is small, but it's bright and airy, with the same sharp scent of pine that lingered around the downstairs. The walls are painted a tasteful shade of cream, and the carpet is thick and warm. The bed is larger than she expected, and piled with soft looking down blankets. There is a small closet, a private bathroom, and a desk and chair beneath the window that will no doubt be lost under an avalanche of research notes within a week. Its a far cry from her old dorm, or even the cramped apartment she's shared with two other grad students the last few years.

Shay beams at Bunnebelle, who is standing politely in the doorway while she looks around.

"Its wonderful, thank you. I haven't lived anywhere half this nice since I moved out of my parents house!" Shay effuses. Bunnebelle chuckles and steps back into the hall.

"I don't know if its all that dear, but I'm glad you like it. Now, you get yourself settled and head on down to the kitchen when you're ready. " the door shuts with a gentle click, leaving Shay standing in the middle of her new room. Her luggage is already sitting in a neat stack at the foot of the bed with its cheerful little patterned penguins winking out at the ceiling, but she walks past it, continuing over to the window over the desk. The view is nothing fancy, there isn't much in the way of sweeping vistas in a cavern. But still, she can see what looks like the town square, with an enormous pine tree covered in twinkle lights standing in the center. A few monsters bustle back and forth across the road, into their homes, or the general store next door. A few children are having a snowball fight across the street. Its a scene one might find in any small town above ground, she thinks, if it weren't for the little details. One of the monsters coming out of the store is little more than a gawping, sharp toothed mouth. The next door neighbor is a slime. (A slime!) And one of the monster children isn't making his snowballs from the drifts on the ground, instead forming them from thin air in the palm of his hand before launching them at his giggling companions.

The realization is sudden and brilliant, and she collapses onto the bed with a soft exhale that sounds like she's been punched in the gut. _I'm actually in the underground._

"I'm _actually_ in the Underground."

She flings herself back atop the blankets with a half mad giggle and squeals into the pillow.

 

 

 

By the time Shay finally collects herself and makes a token effort at settling in, the light outside of the windows is growing dim, and while she already has a thousand questions about how they could possibly have managed a day/night cycle the delicious smells emanating from downstairs and her suddenly ravenous hunger are finally becoming stronger than her curiosity. She surveys the nearly empty bottom of the first suitcase one last time before shrugging and upending the jumble of socks, bras, underthings and an inexplicable playing card into the small dresser tucked into the closet. She can fix that latter.

She pads downstairs and into the kitchen, where Bunnebelle is bustling around, putting the final touches on an enormous pot pie. Pippin is standing on a chair at the stove, stirring what looks like an actual cauldron of soup. Shays mouth waters at the sight. Bunnebelle waves a hand vaguely at an archway on the far side of the kitchen.

"Just in time. Go sit down dear, I'll just be a minute."

"Is there anything you want me to carry out?" Shay hovers uncertainly by the kitchen island, near a gravy boat that looks like it could house a small fleet of model ships. "Or help finish up?" Bunnebelle looks vaguely scandalized.

"Absolutely not! You go relax, it's your first night here. Shoo! Shoo!" Bunnebelle brandishes the most menacing ladle Shay has ever seen at her. Shay beats a hasty retreat to the dinner table.

Dinner, when Pippin and Bunnebelle place it on the table, is easily enough for twenty people, not three. Bunnebelle laughs sheepishly at Shay poorly disguised expression of shock and gestures around the table.

"Help yourself, Shay. I confess I had no idea how much humans eat. We've only had one come through in the last fifty years, and my sister told me that they bought out an entire tray of her cinnamon bunnies. I thought it best to be on the safe side."

Shay ladles herself a bowl of soup with an embarrassed little bob of her head.

"I don't eat _quite_ that much, you'll be glad to know. Not nearly." Pippin leans around the soup tureen to blink owlishly at Shay. Shay sticks her tongue out at him and wiggles her nose, giggling as he ducks back into cover, and idly wonders if all monster children are this shy, or just Rabbits. Bunnebelle smiles fondly at Pippin before turning back to Shay.

"I also wasn't certain if you could eat Magic Food." she says casually, "But it doesn't seem to hurt the Queens little one whenever they stop by. They do love those cinnamon bunnies." Shay freezes with her first spoonful halfway to her mouth.

"There's magic in the food? _All_ the food?" she hesitates. Bunnebelle immediately looks concerned.

"Oh dear, I suppose you wouldn't have had any before. It should be quite safe, not to worry." she soothes. Shay looks the opposite of concerned however, dropping her spoon back into the bowl and leaning forward eagerly.

"Thats amazing! How do you get the magic into the food? How is it different? What makes it magic?" Pippin giggles around a mouthful of pot pie. Bunnebelle blinks bemusedly at the dinner roll in her hand, then back at Shay.

"Well, lets see. Back when I was in school, they told us that human food has no magic in it, yes? It's just whatever grows naturally out of the ground, because humans don't tend their crops or raise their livestock with magic." Shay nods, rapt. "Well, monsters need the magic in our food to live. Our bodies are made completely out of it, so what you think of as food would do us little good. Monster food isn't digested per se, it simply dissolves back into magic and is absorbed by our souls. I don't see why it wouldn't work the same for a human. A soul is a soul."

"Wait, so none of this is solid?" Shay plucks a dinner roll from the plate and tears a piece off. The stretch and rip of it pulling apart feels the same as any other dinner roll shes ever held.

"It is, but it wont stay that way."

Shay pops the piece of bread into her mouth and chews slowly. The Rabbits watch her as she swallows, as though she's a time bomb that might go off at any moment. Shay pauses a moment, focusing on her stomach. She feels...

"Well it feels exactly the same. Delicious though." She shrugs, offering an apologetic grin.

Pippin looks vaguely disappointed. Bunnebelle laughs uproariously.

"I don't know what I expected, really." she says, wiping her eyes with a smile. "Perhaps sometime you could show me some of the human versions. I'd like to compare."

Shay smiles and applies herself to her soup.

"Its a deal."

 

 

 

After dinner Shay upends her remaining luggage and roots through the mess until she finds the journal her favorite professor had gifted her on her last day at the University.

 _'Someday, a hundred years from now,'_ He had told her ' _People will look back and study the years after the Monsters returned. What we said, what they did, how everything happened. Do them a favor and give them something interesting to read_.'

The journal is heavy, bound in leather, with hundreds of thick, sturdy pages. It's the sort of book that will last a long time. Shay opens it up, the spine crackling with newness, and carefully letters her name and the year inside the cover. When she moves to the first page, she pauses a moment, her pen hovering uncertainly over the vast expanse of fresh white paper, before setting it to the page.

'Day One'


	2. The One Where (Potentially Lethal) Mistakes and Friendships Are Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh what is this? This chapter contains people you recognize? Whaaaaaat.
> 
> Have fun kids. Mind the Christmas tree.
> 
>  
> 
> Tumblr:  
> http://archetypeofadespota.tumblr.com/

"Now, the library is just down the street, theres a sign so you can't miss it. You can come back here for lunch of course, or go to Grillbys if you like, I'm sure the town would like to see our new arrival. Dinner is at six. Are you sure that coat is warm enough dear? I think I have a spare around here somewhere that might fit you..." Bunnebelle tugs fussily at the sleeve of Shays jacket as she fusses around her in the breakfast nook the next morning. Shay squirms and swallows a bite of pancake. The matronly Rabbit seems to have adopted Shay completely overnight. Shay is enjoying it, honestly. Five years of college an hour from her parents has made her appreciate being taken care of in the way that small children don't know to miss until it's gone. Still, she's beginning to feel like she's five years old again, on her first day of kindergarten with her mother tutting over her.

"Its fine, Bunnebelle, really. I walked all the way down from the tunnel yesterday and didn't feel a thing. And I'll be inside all day!" she protests. Bunnebelle fixes her with that quintessential stare all mothers seem to possess when confronted with unseasonable clothing.

"It doesn't have proper _sleeves_." she tuts. Shay hides her exposed forearms beneath the table sheepishly. Bunnebelle sighs and heaps another pile of scrambled eggs onto Shays plate before turning back to the stove. Across the table, Pippin giggles. Shay sticks her tongue out at him.

"Laugh it up squirt, she'll be back to mothering _you_ in half an hour." Pippin sobers under her sly smile and looks back down at his plate, but at least he doesn't try to hide under the table. Shay considers that progress. She makes a note to herself to try and make proper friends later on. The poor thing is warming up to her so slowly, his shyness bordering on painful, and she's starting to feel terrible for keeping his guard up this way in his own home, especially when his mother has made her feel so welcome.

Twenty minutes and entirely too many pancakes later, Shay is out the door, One last despairing sigh from Bunnebelle at the state of her coat follows her into the street. Shay very pointedly ignores the involuntary shiver her traitorous body gives at the sudden cold, tamping down memories of her own mother chasing her out of the house with a scarf and a mouthful of I-thought-I-told-you's. That particular battle was one that her mother and common sense had never won, and neither would Bunnebelle. She sets off into the square.

The Library is indeed as easy to find as Bunnebelle had indicated, just across the square and down the street. A solid minute is spent standing under the 'LIBRARBY' sign wondering if she'd been mishearing and monsters actually call them librarby's. Was that silly? Was is speciesist to find that silly? Regardless, she's going to have to spell it 'Librarby' in her thesis.

The inside of the librarby is warm and dry, the smell of old books lingering in the air. The front is filled with a couple of tables and squashy armchairs, thick rugs covering the floor. Only one of the tables is occupied, by a chattering group of monster ladies bent intently over a scattered sheaf of paper. The Hedgehog monster at the desk barely glances up as she enters before returning to his book, turning a page with a flick of his spiny green claw.

"Welcome to the Snowdin Library." his tone has the air of one who answers very stupid questions very often. "Yes, we know the sign is misspelled. How can I help you?" The end of his spiel is accompanied by the most put-upon sigh Shay has ever heard outside of the food service industry. Shay takes a moment for her disappointment in the misspelled sign before walking up to the desk. He still doesn't look up. Shay chews her bottom lip and glances towards the stacks, jammed into the small building in tight rows, some of the shelves stacked with lines of books two or three deep to make as much use of the space as possible. There is absolutely no way she's going to be able to find anything on her own, despite the librarby's small size.

"Ah, hi. I'm Shay. Do you have, um. Maybe a card catalog? Index? Sorting system? I'm looking for kind of a general topic."

"What topic?" the monster turns another page.

"Ah... Magic?"

"What _kind_ of magic?"

"There are _kinds_?"

"There are- are you kidding me?" the sheer ignorance of the statement is finally enough to pull the Hedgehog from his book to give her a stare that makes her feel like a first semester freshman again. He squints up at her for a moment, furrowing his brow before leaning forward and reaching for the pair of glasses resting on the desk beside him and sliding them on. He actually jumps a bit when he manages to focus in on her properly.

"Oh gracious, you're a human." He sits forward abruptly, feet hitting the floor with a thump as he hastily marks his page and tosses the book aside. "I'm terribly sorry, I wasn't expecting... Magic, you said? In general?" There is a burst of giggles from behind Shay- the ladies at the table on the other side of the room.

" _Excellent_ customer service, Erin. You're doing us proud!" the speaker is a bright pink eyeball monster, bouncing with laughter in her seat and sending a few pages fluttering to the floor. The librarian, Erin flushes, the pale green of his skin darkening to an unattractive shade of puce across his snout.

"Go back to your crosswords, Seez!" he snaps. Shay feels the corner of her mouth twitch, and fights down the smirk. _Research rule number one,_ she reminds herself, _never anger the librarians_. Reflexively, Erin glowers at her before realizing that he's still trying to salvage some semblance of a decent impression for the human. He clears his throat, pointedly.

"So. Magic. This way." he gestures for her to follow and scuttles around the desk and back into the stacks, throwing one last scowl at Seez on his way by. "Now, I have no idea what sort of background you have, or where you'd like to start. What exactly are you looking for? There's... a lot." Erin is leading her towards the back of the stacks, winding between the shelves as the colorful displays of romance and mystery novels give way to the more somber bindings of reference texts. Shay collects her thoughts for a moment before answering.

"Well, anything really. Humans haven't had a firsthand account of magic for five hundred years, and record keeping back then was... rubbish, really. I haven't been able to get my hands on more than some histories that mention it and one of the journals the last human sorcerers left behind. And that's another thing, we used to have human sorcerers, but... not anymore. After the Barrier, there's nothing. They stopped showing up. As far as we can tell, there was never a human sorcerer again. Its like the ancient monsters took all the magic with them, and no one knows how or why." she gestures wildly as she talks, the irritation with hours and hours of fruitless research leaking into her tone. "There were all sort of theories about why. Scholars said that it was stolen from the world, that is was punishment for our sins in sealing the monsters, even that magic _came_ from the monsters. No one really knows, and the sorcerers were secretive bastards who couldn't be asked to keep a journal or something, except the one, and he was _cryptic_. I assume it wouldn't make any sense unless you were a sorcerer yourself. So we have, just, nothing. Nobody knows." she pauses abruptly, realizing how terrible this sounds. "Well. _You_ know, I suppose. And there's really no polite way for me to go about this since humans did this to themselves. Somehow. Apparently." She trails off awkwardly as Erin stops by a shelf stacked with shiny, silver-embossed volumes. She is suddenly, painfully aware of how crass her entire area of study seems when viewed from a monsters perspective. Erin's face is unreadable as he reaches up and begins pulling volumes down.

"I'm going to assume you don't have any basis at all." he speaks as though he hasn't heard a word she's said. Shay shuffles awkwardly in place, realizing she may already have broken her 'don't anger the librarians' rule, and keeps her mouth firmly shut. "It might be best if I sit down with you and walk you through some of the terminology, since everything will be written with the assumption that the reader has a working knowledge of the subject matter. You don't start a cookbook with an explanation of how to eat." He stops when the stack of books in his arms reaches intimidating heights and meets her gaze. Shay holds her breath.

"Look. You're right, there's no good way to approach this. But, you're a historian, I'm guessing." he pauses to wait for Shay's nod. "So you know all sorts of things I don't. Monsters have hundreds of years of surface history to catch up on, and we're trying to join a world we know nothing about. So." He plops the stack of books unceremoniously into Shay's arms. She staggers a moment under the unexpected weight. "How about we agree to ignore the fact that your ancestors were massive assholes, and do this like professionals. Deal?" Shay snorts before she can stop herself, but smiles back at him.

"Deal."

"Good." Erin takes down one last book and starts back towards the front. "So. If you have time now? I could give you a quick overview." Shay nods furiously.

"Yes! Please! It's only slightly melodramatic to say I've waited my whole life for this conversation."

Erin chuckles and sets the books down on the table furthest from the women on the other side of the room. "You know, most monster children find learning magical theory incredibly dull. You might be disappointed."

Shay looks offended. "Never!"

"Alright, so to start, no. Magic does not come from monsters." Erin sits down and starts leafing through was looks like a basic encyclopedia. "It comes from souls. Any soul. That's the basic principle all magic follows; if you have a soul, you can do magic. Rule numero uno." He sets the book down in front of her, opened to the page on magic. The illustration is simple, a diagram of a monster with a heart drawn inside its chest. Shay blinks.

"Thats it?"

"That's it. You could probably learn, honestly. There's no reason- woah, calm down. Have a seat." he hovers a concerned claw by her arm as she sits down heavily next to him. "You can't be that surprised."

"No, trust me, I can. Every source I have says that sorcerers were special and rare and took decades of training to get their magic!" She sputters. Nearly every carefully constructed theory and accepted 'fact' drilled into her head about magic dies a quiet, painful death in the back of her mind as Erin scoffs.

"Hardly. I've read every book in this library, Shay. Humans could definitely use magic more often than that before we went Underground. Maybe to do the sort of magic monsters do you'd have to do all that, but from everything I've read, human magic is different. Monsters come into their magic as children, as early as the day we're born. It's easy for us since our bodies are made out of the stuff, we can feel it from the moment we're old enough to think about it. Human bodies are physical, solid. I'd assume the reason you don't is because you aren't in touch with your souls the way we are. Also, your souls are completely different in nature. That's why monsters couldn't break the barrier. They have something referred to as determination, and I've heard they have colors!" His face is briefly over taken with that fanatic wonderment inherent to scholars. He looks at her expectantly. Shay looks back.

"What?"

Erin gestures impatiently. "Human souls! Are they really different colors? Monster souls are only ever white."

Shay shrugs, spreads her hands out in a gesture of confusion. "I... don't know? It's not like you can see them to be able to tell." Erin opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Shay feels a dull pain in her temple as she realizes she's said something stupid again.

"You... of course you can!" he makes a strange sort of pulling gesture at his chest, and thats all the warning Shay has before a soft white light fills the room. Erin holds his soul carefully in the palm of his hand. It's Shays turn to gawp now, eyes comically wide. Its a soft dove white, shaped like an upside-down heart suspended over his open claw. She continues to stare until Erin returns it to his chest a moment later.

"I- we- wow. No. No, humans can't... do that." she blinks down to where the soul had disappeared back into him, stunned.

Erin looks horrified. "You can't feel it? At all?" He clutches at the spot over where his heart would be, claws digging into the fabric of his sweater. Shay mimics the action, looking down at her chest.

"No? I mean, I wouldn't know. How would I know if I did?"

"Well." Erin smiles ruefully. "If I had to guess why humans can't do magic, my bet would be on that. That's... how magic works, at least in my experience. It comes right from here."

Shay sits back in her chair her chair with a huff. "So, how do I do it then? How do I... pull my soul out like that? I assume if I manage that I'd be able to feel it after, right?" He shrugs.

"I honestly don't know. Its not something monsters have to worry about. Your human sorcerers must have found some way to do it. If you want to learn magic, I suppose this is as good a place as any to start."

 

 

 

Shay exits the library piled with books and filled with determination. Yes, she thinks, she could simply study the sorcerers and their magic, try to piece it together from the laws of magic and ancient monster books. OR, she could experience it for herself! She could be her own damned primary source, poor research methods be hanged!

She sets off down the street, armful of books swaying precariously. She rounds the corner at a brisk trot, eager to get to the Snowed Inn for lunch and to begin her research. As she turns into the square though, she's halted in her tracks by a gasp and an earsplittingly loud shriek of delight just behind her.

"HUMAN!"

She drops her books into the snow with a shout, spinning towards the voice fast enough to nearly send herself to the ground after them.

"YES YOU! THATS RIGHT, YOU ARE NOT SO SNEAKY! I CAN RECOGNIZE YOU NOW! YOU WILL NOT SURPRISE ME!" The skeleton standing akimbo before her is easily seven feet tall, armored, and would be incredibly intimidating were it not for the pure childish excitement radiating off of him. Shay's eyes dart to her books, not daring to pick them up, wondering for the first time since entering the underground if some concern for her safety wouldn't be prudent, before deciding that manners are probably a better bet.

"Ah, Hello?" she tries. He glances down at the tomes scattered at her feet for a moment before gasping, again, and leaping to collect them. "MY APOLOGIES HUMAN! I SHOULD HAVE REALIZED THAT THE PRESENCE OF I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WOULD BE TOO AWESOME AND SHOCKING FOR SOMEONE UNPREPARED TO FACE ME!" he presents the now stacked books to her with a flourish and a bow. Shay shakes herself out of her nonplussal, and takes them, continuing to stare up (and up and up) at Papyrus. "I MERELY WISHED TO EXPRESS MY GREAT EXCITEMENT AT YOU BEING HERE! AND TO MAKE FRIENDS! FOR HERE, IN SNOWDIN, EVERYONE IS MY FRIEND, AND I WOULD NOT WANT YOU TO FEEL LEFT OUT!"

Shay smiles despite herself; his enthusiasm infectious. Her brief flash of anxiety melts away as quickly as it had come. She shifts her books to the crook of her arm and offers Papyrus a hand to shake.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you, Papyrus. I appreciate it." Papyrus _beams,_ both of his enormous gloved hands engulfing her smaller one as he shakes it heartily.

"I AM GLAD YOU ARE HERE HUMAN! THERE HAVE BARELY BEEN ANY HUMANS HERE AT ALL EXCEPT FOR FRISK, AND YOU ARE THE FIRST SHE-HUMAN I HAVE SEEN AT ALL. AND YOU HAVE SO MANY BOOKS!!! WHAT ARE ALL OF THE BOOKS FOR? ARE THEY COOKBOOKS? OR PUZZLE BOOKS?" Shay extricates her hand from his grasp to hold up one of the books. The cover is embossed with a shiny silver heart and the words ' _Mistress Moldsmalls Guide to Magical Theory, A Children's Primer'._

"Magic books!" she chirps.

Papyrus makes a face, the bones of his face molding themselves into an expression that somehow manages to convey a wrinkled nose, without a nose.

"THAT DOES NOT SEEM AS FUN OR INTERESTING AS PUZZLES. BUT MY BROTHER LIKES THAT SORT OF THING. WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY SOME OF MY PUZZLE BOOKS? I HAVE A NEW JUNIOR JUMBLE AT HOME."

"I have to study though." Shay laughs. She turns and starts walking back across the square again, Papyrus trailing after her like a happy puppy, "I'm going to be the first human to learn magic! And hopefully these will help, since I have no idea how." Papyrus freezes in his tracks, and Shay pauses, looking back over her shoulder a him.

"Papyrus?"

"YOU WANT TO LEARN MAGIC? LIKE A MONSTER?" He clarifies, studying her carefully, a manic light in his eyes.

"Um. Yes?"

"YOU NEED TRAINING!!!" Papyrus whoops. "THAT'S THE ONLY WAY TO GET BETTER AT ANYTHING!! AND I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, KNOW JUST THE MONSTER TO HELP!" He grasps her free hand and tugs her back across the square again, this time in the direction leading out of town.

"Woah woah woah hang on!" Shay digs her heels into the snow as she tries to slow him down. "Who? Where? What do you mean training? No, seriously, hang on I'm gonna drop my books!"

Papyrus pauses thoughtfully, still gripping her wrist, "YES, YOU SHOULD PUT YOUR BOOKS AT HOME. ALSO UNDYNE SHOULD PROBABLY COME HERE INSTEAD. SHE ASKED ME NOT TO BREAK HER WINDOWS FOR A FEW DAYS BECAUSE HER HOUSE WAS JUST REBUILT AGAIN LAST MONTH."

Shay decides to let that one go.

Papyrus lets her lead the way back to the Snowed Inn, staying in the lobby to call his friend while she trots upstairs to set her book on the desk. She stops a moment in the library, wondering for a moment if perhaps going off for unspecified training with a total stranger is a completely stupid move on her part, before shrugging and continuing back down. _You never get anywhere in life staying at home,_ she thinks with a small smile.

Papyrus is pacing the length of the waiting area when she returns, waving his free arm in wide circles as he shouts into the mouthpiece of his cellphone.

"YES REALLY! A HUMAN! AND SHE NEEDS TRAINING UNDYNE, AND YOU ARE THE BEST AT TRAINING. IT IS OUR DUTY AS MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL GUARD TO HELP." He pauses a moment, cocking his head and waving brightly as he catches sight of Shay standing politely at the foot of the stairs before turning his attention back to the call. "BESIDES, OUR COOKING LESSON IS NOT UNTIL TOMORROW AND SANS IS AT THE LAB WITH APLHYS SO I KNOW YOU DONT HAVE A DATE AND YOU MUST BE BORED- NYAH-HA-HA!! WE WILL WAIT FOR YOU IN THE SQUARE!" he flips the phone closed with a _snap._ "SHE WILL BE HERE IN FIVE MINUTES."

Shay grins and saunters over to join him. "I'm glad it's not just me you managed to sweet talk into this."

"OF COURSE! THE GREAT PAPYRUS' POWERS OF PERSUASION ARE SECOND TO NONE!" Papyrus grabs her hand and drags her back out the door. "WE HAD BETTER HURRY, HUMAN. UNDYNE'S TIME HAS BEEN GETTING BETTER LATELY. SHE CAN MAKE IT FROM HOTLAND TO HERE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES!"

"Wait, seriously? Isn't that all the way on the other side of the underground?"

"OF COURSE. BUT SHE HAS BEEN GETTING LOTS OF PRACTICE VISITING DOCTOR ALPHYS. I CAN DO IT IN TWENTY THREE MINUTES NOW! UNDYNE IS A VERY GOOD TEACHER, YOU'LL SEE!"

As they cross back into the road, Shay hears a distant _THOOM_ , and a cloud of white rises in the far distance. At her side, Papyrus ' _Nyehs_ ' happily.

"OH GOOD, SHE IS ALMOST HERE."

Shay shades her eyes and squints into the distance at the plume of vapor speeding towards them. "Oh she's _driving_ , that makes more sense. I didn't realize you had cars down here. Thats pretty-" Abruptly the cloud resolves itself into the shape of a woman as it speeds out of the trees and into Snowdin. She bursts into the open with a leap and lands dead center of the square with an earthshaking thud. Shay stares in disbelief as cracks spiderweb through the pavement from beneath the woman's feet. She scans the space with a narrow yellow eye before bounding over to them with a shout.

"Papyrus!" she clocks him affectionately on the shoulder, hard enough that Shay can hear his armor rattle against his bones, before turning her attention to Shay with a sharp-toothed grin and a nod. "And recruit!" She lunges for Shays hand and shakes it with a grip hard enough to make her bones squeak in protest, before striking a pose that can't help but remind Shay of some kind of cartoon hero. Actually, everything about this her seems unreal and fantastical, her decidedly fishy features the most normal thing about her.

"I'm Undyne!" she says brightly.

"Shay!" Shay manages, grinning helplessly as she shakes her hand out and cracks her slightly squashed fingers.

"SHE'S ALL READY TO LEARN UNDYNE. I WOULD TRAIN HER MYSELF OF COURSE, BUT... WELL. I DON'T KNOW HOW." Papyrus looks completely unabashed at his admission, despite the incredulous look Undyne immediately turns his way.

"Papyrus! What kind of defeatist attitude is that?! You've been doing brilliant with Alphys!" She stomps a foot hard enough for a monster to poke his head out of the bar and grill nearby to check for the source of the small earthquake. Papyrus is undeterred.

"OF COURSE I HAVE! BUT THE HUMAN WANTS TO LEARN MAGIC, NOT FIGHTING. I DON'T THINK ANYONE HERE KNOWS HOW TO TEACH MAGIC. BUT OF COURSE _YOU_ DO!"

Undyne pauses, serrated smile losing its edges for a moment as she processes. "Uh." she rounds on Shay, scrutinizing her closely. Shay shrugs.

"I was just gonna learn _about_ it. But Erin in the library told me, what, half an hour ago? Just about? That I could learn. So I'm gonna do that."

Undyne slaps her heartily on the back.

"Fu hu hu! Well, I admire your quick action! But, I have NO idea how to teach magic. So this is gonna be a learning experience for all of us!" She mirrors Shay's shrug. Shay raises an eyebrow in surprise.

"What, just like that?"

"Of course!" Undyne looks offended at the notion that she wouldn't. "If you don't know how to do something, you just have to do it! Until you can do it!! And become _the absolute best at it_!!!"She pumps her fist in the air, expression manic. "So lets gets started! Ah. Somehow!"

"Actually," Shay interjects, "I have an idea about that."

 

 

 

"Undyne, I'm pretty sure this is a terrible idea." Shay is very much rethinking her judgement of the two monsters helping her on this magical journey. Across the square Undyne flaps a hand at her dismissively.

"It's totally fine!" she scoffs. "Look, if you need to see your soul to be able to feel it, this is the easiest way. I mean, it worked when I was fighting Frisk, right? Chucked a few spears their way and BAM. Soul." Beside her Papyrus is nodding his enthusiastic agreement.

"AND BONES!"

Shay is not reassured.

"Wait, isn't ambassador Frisk, like, nine? What were you doing throwing spears at them?!" She screeches. Undyne clears her throat and scratches at her eyepatch awkwardly.

"Ah... Training? Right Papyrus?" Papyrus looks confused.

"OF COURSE NOT UNDYNE, THAT WAS WHEN YOU WERE TRYING TO CAPT-"

"Totally! TRAINING!" Undyne cuts him off. She claps her hands together briskly. "So. Lets get this party started!" Shay watches nervously as Undyne summons a glowing blue spear to her hand, it edges crackling with white light. She takes a dramatic crouched battle stance. Papyrus retreats to the edge of the square and perches on a bench to spectate.

"Ready?"

Shay hesitates, looking around at the houses circling the square. "Wait, shouldn't we at least go somewhere else? You're gonna break a window or something- Woah!" She hits the bricks just in time to avoid the projectile that whizzes over her head. It lodges itself firmly into someones painstakingly whitewashed picket fence, vibrating slightly.

"Alrighty. Guess collateral damage isn't a concern then." she breathes. Undyne whoops and summons another spear.

"'Atta girl! Get ready, that was just a warm-up!" Shay laughs and bounces to her feet, the adrenaline already singing its way into her veins. Perhaps, she reflects briefly, letting strange monsters throw magic spears at her in the name of research isn't the _safest_ way to be going about this, but it sure as hell beats sitting in a lecture hall. And then she's off, dodging her way through the hail of spears Undyne sends her way, calling on every bit of muscle memory that lingers from a childhood of junior gymnastics. She's especially pleased to note she can still do a backflip when Undyne sends a volley right at her knees in quick succession. When she rights herself, panting, Papyrus lets out a cheer, and Undyne sends her a look that almost seems impressed.

"Well, clearly you can handle the baby stuff just fine! So lets see about THIS!" The spears leave her hands in an arc, and Shay, already beginning to tire from the unexpected workout, only barely manages to avoid them, turning to the side as the last second. She feels one of the edges slice through her cheek, just below her eye. The pain is sudden and biting, and Shay claps a palm to her face with a gasp.

"Whoa, hang on!" she calls. "Those are actually _sharp_?!"

Undyne pauses. "Well, yeah. Its not gonna work unless you're in actual danger from foreign magic, right? That's the impression I got." she shrugs. "I'm not aiming for anything vital. Mostly."

Shay gapes at her. "Forgive me for not being reassured! HEY!" she ducks the opportunistic spear Undyne flicks her way while she's talking. "Seriously, I'm gonna lose an eye or something!" Undyne roars with laughter, and yeah, perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words.

"Maybe you'll get a cool scar out of this!" she snickers, snapping the strap of her eyepatch for emphasis. "Chicks dig scars!" And then they're off again, Shay doing her best not to lose a limb and Undyne doing her best to make good on her threat of a cool scar. From the sidelines, Papyrus keeps up a steady stream of cheering and supportive commentary. It would honestly make Shay feel a bit better, if he wasn't encouraging Undyne in equal measure. The vast majority of the fun has been sucked out of the experience with the knowledge that she might actually get hurt doing this. She admits that yeah, Undyne is probably right, but rationality doesn't mean much with projectiles being aimed at your vitals. She skids to a stop during a break in the onslaught, gasping for breath. Her knees and shoulders are starting to ache from hitting the paving brick over and over as she evades, and she's pretty sure her leggings are ripped across the knee. They've shifted positions over the course of their mock-battle, Shay standing below the 'Grillbys' sign of the restaurant, and Undyne camped by the Christmas tree in the square center. Undyne is beginning to look annoyed now, irritation bleeding across her features at her inability to land a hit.

"You know, maybe you should just hold still." she growls, her smile containing a few too many edges to seem genuinely helpful. "Maybe a nice, solid whack will do it."

Shay snorts, risks putting her hands on her knees and bending over to catch her wind.

"How about.." she gasps, "How about NO." she meets Undyne's eye with a smirk. "You'll just have to do better than that."

Immediately, she is filled with regret. She jerks upright as Undyne's eye flashes dangerously, her smile going feral.

" _Oh really._ " Undyne pivots, quick as a whip, and in one fluid motion _suplexes the christmas tree out of the ground_ and hurls it at Shay.

Shay has just enough time, between her shriek of terror and the tree reaching her, to register the _ping_ in her chest, like a bell being rung, before the tree comes down on top of her.


	3. The One Where Shay Acquires New Hair Ornaments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS you're all so nice to me, what is this. You are small, but I am filled with warm fuzzies. And determination I guess, but mostly fuzzies. Your reward is a chapter with the other half of this relationship finally making an appearance.

Shay ducks and covers as the branches crash down around her in a tangle of tinsel and twinkle lights. Ornaments fall to the brick and shatter, loudly, like brightly colored hail, and darkness settles around her as the strings of light flicker and fizzle out. There is not, however, pain. Of any kind actually, save the annoying prickle of pine needles digging into her shoulder. The rustling diminishes as the tree settles itself, and tentatively, she lifts her head. 

She is cocooned, improbably, in a gap in the branches, just large enough to fit her. To her right, a bough is pressed against her side, and with a jolt she registers that wow, yes, another few inches to the side and she'd have trees for guts. She giggles a bit, hysterically, at the thought of how lucky she'd just been, before shaking her head and trying to stand up. She freezes. For the first time she notices the dim golden glow filling the space, shifting when she moves.

She looks down.

There, hovering a few inches from her chest, is her soul. 

"Undyne!" she whoops, shooting to her feet, and barking her head on a particularly large decorative bauble. She rubs her head and scrambles over the branch that had nearly impaled her, near death experience all but forgotten, tripping over ropes of twinkle lights in her excitement. "Undyne, it worked!"

There is a rustling to her left, and the branches part a few feet away. Undyne and Papyrus crowd into the gap, concern etched into their faces before they catch sight of her. Undyne looks her over for a moment before her eyes light on the soul bobbing in front of Shays chest. 

"Hah!" She grins, triumphant. "I told you it'd work!" Papyrus nods in excited agreement. 

"CONGRATULATIONS HUMAN. IT'S A VERY NICE SOUL. LIKE THE SUN!" he approves. 

Shay follows their gaze, studying her soul more closely. Its a warm, bright yellow. The color seems to shift under her gaze, like honey and sunflowers and the crinkled edges of the pages of an old book, and indeed, as Papyrus said, like sunshine. It flutters a bit under her scrutiny, and she smiles. 

"A bit, yeah. Not too shabby." 

"CAN YOU DO MAGIC NOW, HUMAN?"

"Uh. I don't know? I don't feel any different." Experimentally, she brushes her fingertips against the center. The sensation is _bizarre_ ,and she sucks in a breath as she does it again. She can feel it, dimly. Like touching your arm when it's fallen asleep, or prodding at your gums after losing a tooth. As she runs her hand over more of the surface she gains a dim awareness of the edges, can feel the static crackle of its energy in the back of her mind.

"Oh that is... friggin crazy. This is so weird." she titters. She rakes a hand through her hair nervously and draws her fingers away from the soul. Undyne chuckles, and Shay looks back at her sheepishly.

"Come on." Undyne bends back one of the branches obstructing Shays egress and gestures her forward. "Put that away and get outta there so I can move the tree. Grillby won't be happy if we keep blocking the entrance to his bar." 

Shay blinks down at the little glowing heart, still obstinately bobbing before her. "Ah. Right. How do I...?" she prods at it. "How do I put it back?" Undyne brows knit together thoughtfully. 

"I dunno, you just kinda.. Shove it back in there?" She makes a supremely unhelpful sort of scooping motion in front of her chest with her free hand. 

"Right." Shay grasps the back of her soul gingerly and pushes. It follows her motion, and she scoots it through the air until it rests against her coat, above her sternum. It resists a bit as she presses it against the fabric of her shirt, the scratch of the fabric feeling wrong against the buzzing in the back of her skull. Making a face, she squashes it through the jacket quickly. The sensation is incredibly unpleasant, but when it's over Shay can still feel her soul, nestled behind her rib cage. She pokes at her ribs above it, unused to the feeling. Undyne snickers at her. 

"Hush, you." Shay sticks her tongue out at Undyne before she begins her scramble through the quagmire of broken branches and shattered ornaments towards Undyne and Papyrus. The tree is truly massive, the branches she's been standing between at least ten feet from trunk to tip. As she nears the edge, several very unfortunate developments happen at once. Shay slips on a broken shard of ornament. Papyrus reaches to catch her and shoulder checks Undyne. Undyne releases the branch she was holding back, and the branch and all its decorative baubles whips forward.

The end result is Shay being whacked in the face with the tree branch, an especially heavy metal orb bauble hitting her in the eye at high speed. 

"FUCK."

She staggers the last few steps back into the open, clutching at her eye and swearing a blue streak. 

"HUMAN, ARE YOU OKAY?!"

"Oh shit, I'm sorry!" 

Shay stems the tide of profanity as the initial stinging pain fades, waving off Undyne and Papyrus as they hover over her. 

"It's cool, it's fine, it's totally fine. Super fine. Ultra fine." she takes her hand away from its compression over her eye to wipe at the tears leaking from it, hissing as blood floods back to the area. Undyne winces as she gets a look at the damage.

"Oh that can't feel good." 

"HUMAN YOUR EYE IS TURING PURPLE. IS IT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?" Papyrus takes her gently by the shoulders and bends to get a proper assessment, tugging her hand away from her eye to peer at the rapidly swelling skin. Undyne peers over his shoulder. Her guilty face only serves to make Shay feel worse.

"Aw man, Shay. I'm super sorry." she squirms. "I mean the eyepatch thing is cool an' all, but I don't think it's your style."

Shay winces as Papyrus pokes at her eyelid. "Right, ok. I think this one is gonna call for an ice-pack." She bats Papyrus' questing phalanges away from her face and straightens up, pressing her hand back to her eye. Undyne perks right up at the mention of a physical action to take, glancing around the square wildly, before remembering the Bar and Grill located a convenient twenty feet away behind the giant tree. In a trice, Undyne is at the foot of the tree, heaving it upright and tossing it clean over the building, where it lands in the back with a muffled crash. She dusts her hands off with satisfaction. 

"Alright!! Grillby'll have something for you, for sure." 

Shay peers around Undyne to the bar, where the entire front window is packed with patrons, noses pressed to the glass as they strain to catch a glimpse of the kerfuffle outside. Undyne ignores them, sauntering past the window to open the door for Shay and Papyrus. 

The interior is small, but inviting. The tables are filled with monsters here for lunch, in varying shapes, sizes, and colors. The monsters squished into the window frame move away as they enter, settling back down to their poker game. Shay pauses a moment as she realizes that they're all dogs, heavily armed and armored. They give a wave to Undyne when she walks in behind Shay and Papyrus, the hooded pair at the end of the table saluting. 

"Hey, Captain Undyne!" the rottweiler in the pink tank top calls. Undyne waves him off with a friendly nod, and he turns back to the table, striking a match to light the end of the dog treat dangling from his mouth.

Undyne and Papyrus steer Shay to the bar and hoist her onto a barstool, ignoring her protestations that _her legs work just fine thank you,_ and sit on either side of her. Shay catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrored back of the liquor shelf, and cringes. Her eye is swelling rapidly, even around where her hand is pressed against it, and the cut on her cheek from earlier has smeared into a drippy streak of red down her cheek. There are pine needles in her hair. She looks exactly like she's just gone twelve rounds with an overzealous fish and had a christmas tree dropped on her. 

"I look _fantastic._ " she grins at Undyne, scooping a napkin off the bar and pressing it to the cut. Undyne snorts, her shark smile making a reappearance. 

"You look tough! Like a mighty slayer of trees!" she crows. She offers Shay a fistbump, which Shay enthusiastically accepts. Papyrus looks horrified suddenly, leaning around Shay to look at Undyne.

"OH NO. UNDYNE. I JUST REALIZED WE BROKE THE TREE!!" He looks stricken. "HOW WILL SANTA LEAVE PRESENTS NOW?!" Shay pats him on his armored shoulder. 

"Its okay Papyrus, you've got another four months to fix the tree." she soothes. Papyrus seems mollified.

"I SUPPOSE SO."

The door to the kitchen swings open while they're talking, a new monster stepping behind the bar. He's tall, smartly dressed in an old fashioned bartenders' suit, and _made entirely out of fire._ Shay sucks in a breath at the sight. Most of the monsters she's seen thus far have been animal amalgams, or harmless little things like slimes and molds. This one is decidedly more impressive by human standards. She watches with fascination as he shuts the door, his flaming hand not so much as singeing the wood. He catches sight of them sitting there, and immediately heads over, stopping in front of Undyne with his arms crossed and radiating irritation. 

"Undyne." his voice crackles, ( _literally,_ Shay thinks with amusement) with disapproval, and Undyne immediately looks contrite. 

"Sorry, Grillby. I'll take care of the tree before I leave, promise." she says sheepishly.

Grillby 'hm's and turns to look at Shay and Papyrus. He startles visibly as he finally sees Shay, still covering her bad eye and trying not to bleed on the bar, her napkin already soaking through. His face is featureless, the flame that comprises it permanently shifting, but the flickers of light behind his glasses somehow manage to convey an impression of stunned, rapid, blinking. Slowly, he reaches beneath the counter and extracts a clean dishtowel, which he passes to her.

"There are pine needles in your hair." he says finally. Shay snorts unattractively and bursts into laughter. 

"Thanks for noticing. Could I maybe get a cup of ice to put in this?" She waggles the towel. "It'll help my face be slightly less purple tomorrow." Grillby nods and retreats to the kitchen again without another word. Shay tugs at the neck of her jacket sadly, contemplating the drops of blood soaked into the white fluff there. 

"I liked this coat you know." she mourns. Undyne claps her on the back in commiseration.

"Not much room for fashion in battle. Unless it's a gigantic set of cool looking armor. There's always room for that!" she whoops. Papyrus knocks on the front of his chestpiece, his gloved hand making a dull clanging sound against it. 

"YOU SHOULD GET SOME ARMOR, HUMAN. I WEAR MY BATTLE BODY EVERY DAY!" he advises earnestly. "YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN. ALSO I LOOK REALLY COOL ALL THE TIME." Shay contemplates the shiny white surface with mock seriousness for a moment before shaking her head. 

"I don't think so Papyrus, I don't think I could pull it off half as well as you do. I'll stick with my pine needles. They're kinda growing on me." She admires her pointy green adornments in the mirror for a moment. 

"THAT IS TRUE, IT IS VERY HARD TO LOOK AS AWESOME AS I DO. I WOULDN'T WANT YOU TO FEEL BAD. I LIKE YOUR PINE NEEDLES ANYWAY."

"You're a sweetheart, Papyrus, really."

Grillby returns with a glass of ice and sets it on the bar in front of Shay. 

"Thank you." she says, sliding it over to her. She pauses, looking down into the glass, trying to figure out what's wrong with the image in front of her. She looks from the pristine, unmelted ice to Grillby, who, yes, is still made of fire. "Wait. How did you do that?"

Grillby pauses and tilts his head at her questioningly. Shay gestures wildly at the ice in front of her, pointedly ignoring Undyne's laughter at her side. 

"The ice. It's not- How- You know exactly what I mean don't you." Shay sighs and dumps the ice into the towel, wrapping it up and slapping it to her swollen eye. "Magic, man. Its like you're all in a cool club I haven't joined yet. I'm not quite rude enough to ask how your glasses stay on, but I assure you sir, I'm wondering." Grillby makes a strange _popcracklewhoosh_ sound, shoulders shaking slightly, and it takes Shay a moment to realize he's laughing. He shakes his head and turns to take a new customers order, leaving Shay to stare at the side of his head in irritation because _how are his glasses staying on?_ until Undyne elbows her. Shay drops her eye back to the counter, embarrassed.

"I'm just making fantastic impressions all over the place today." She sighs. "Today's been too weird for me to remember my manners. Now I'm the rude human."

Undyne scoffs and gives Shay a friendly slug on the shoulder. It feels a bit like being gently whacked with a sledgehammer. "Pfft, don't worry about it. I mean, I dropped a tree on you, and we still made friends, right?" the casual way Undyne declares them friends instantly makes Shay feel better, and she beams back at her.

"Right."

"SO YOUVE MADE TWO FRIENDS TODAY, HUMAN!" Papyrus declares. "THATS VERY GOOD FOR YOUR FIRST DAY! I'M SURE YOU'LL MAKE FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE IN NO TIME, AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE ALMOST AS MANY AS THE GREAT PAPYRUS!"

"You know, Papyrus," Shay laughs, "I might let you call me Shay now, instead of Human. But only because we're such good friends." Papyrus' eye sockets light up.

"OF COURSE, HU- SHAY! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL NOT ABUSE THE PRIVILEGE YOU HAVE BESTOWED UPON HIM!" Undyne nudges Shay again, remembering something.

"Hey, so speaking of our cool magic monster club. Did it work? I mean, obviously it sorta worked. But you're only halfway there! You gotta stay focused!" Undyne pounds a fist on the bar for emphasis, though she takes it off and folds it in her lap quickly as Grillby turns and fixes her with a thousand yard stare. Papyrus _nyehs_ in agreement behind Shay.

"CAN YOU DO MAGIC YET? I WONDER WHAT KIND OF MAGIC YOU HAVE. I BET IT'S SUPER COOL HUMAN MAGIC!! LIKE LASERS!!" Shay shrugs, wincing when the motion jostles the ice over her eye. 

"Dunno. I mean, I don't think so?" She cups a hand over her chest where she can still feel her soul nestled by her heart. "I've got a shiny new organ though. So that's progress? Now I just have to figure out how to use it. Do you guys seriously not have any sort of magic teachers? Nothing?" 

Undyne shakes her head apologetically. "Nuh-uh. I mean, a trainer or a teacher can help us get _better_ at our magic, but no one teaches us how to use it. You just kinda do it. I guess you're gonna have to figure it out yourself. With training! And hard work!" Shays poor bruised face throbs just looking at the excited gleam in Undyne's eye. 

"Oh, yeah. Training.. You know, maybe I should do some more research first. To help with the training? So it can be... the best training?" Shay scrambles for an excuse to buy her a day or two's healing. Undyne just looks amused.

"You sound like Alphys." She sighs with exasperated fondness. "All that research when you could be making progress! If you think it'll help though, knock yourself out. Actually, I can ask Alphys if she knows anything. She's amazing at stuff like this, I bet she'll have a way to help."

"Who's Alphys?" Shay blinks. "Papyrus mentioned her when you were on the phone earlier." Immediately Undyne flushes a deep blue, and starts to pick apart a bar napkin, shredding it into tiny pieces as a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.

"DOCTOR ALPHYS IS UNDYNE'S GIRLFRIEND!" Papyrus supplies helpfully.

"Yeah, she's my girlfriend. The Royal Scientist. We've been together just over a year now. I'll introduce you sometime. I'm sure she'll have a ton of questions to ask you. She's been crazy excited, waiting for the humans to start letting their people down here and monsters go off Mt. Ebott."

Shay watches with amusement as Mt. Shredded Napkin grows while Undyne talks. "She sounds great, Undyne. I can't wait to meet her." 

"Of course you can't! Anyway, gimme your phone and we'll trade numbers. I gotta be heading back soon, Alphys'll be getting done with Sans at the lab in a little bit." Undyne fishes her phone out of her pocket and waits for Shay to dig her out. Much to Shay's horror, however, when she reaches into her pocket for her phone, she immediately feels the grit of broken glass against her fingertips. She yanks it out of her pocket, watching forlornly as a piece of the screen falls out onto the bar.

"ARE HUMAN CELL PHONES SUPPOSED TO BE THAT CRUMBLY?"

Shay sighs and sets her ice pack down so she can turn the phone over and examine it. The screen is shattered, the display flickering feebly beneath the spiderwebbing cracks. "No, Papyrus, they're not. It must have broken earlier with the tree." Undyne picks up the chip of broken glass from the bar and scrutinizes it.

"I guess I'll also ask Alphys to throw a phone together for you." she deadpans. "I'll just bring that by tomorrow then, shall I?" Shay doesn't protest. She is too preoccupied with mourning the death of her phone, piling the glass shards into a sad little cairn on the bar, to register the door opening behind her. 

"Shay! There you are!" A decidedly harried-looking Sable bounds inside, stomping snow off her sneakers with a touch more force than strictly necessary. "Spirits above, I've been looking everywhere for you, and _calling_! Bunnebelle had no idea where you- Your _face!_ " She hastens to the bar, gripping Shay's stool and yanking it around until Shay is facing her, completely ignoring the twin squawks of indignation from Undyne and Papyrus. "What happened? Who did this? I thought I told you to _avoid_ diplomatic incidents! It's only the first day down here, there's no possible way I can make this look good to the human university if they find out about this!" Shay raises her hands placatingly and leans back away from Sables intense stare, as Undyne leans forward threateningly. 

"It's not a big deal. Sorry, I didn't know when you were-"

"Hey, lady!" Undyne cuts Shay off abruptly, "Get off of her! What the hell?!" She slides off her chair and into Sable's personal space to stare her down, bristling. Sable takes her paws off the stool to face her, and recoils at the six foot plus of angry fish monster looming down at her. 

"I- Captain Undyne?" Sable blinks, and takes a step back in shock. "What are you doing with Shay?" The poor woman has clearly had the rug pulled out from under her more than once today, and it is for that reason and that reason alone that Shay manages to swallow the laughter that bubbles up at the thunderstruck look on Sables face and do something constructive instead, like diffuse the miniature catfight brewing in front of her. She hops off her stool and slides in between the two monsters, clearing her throat loudly. They startle a bit, and break their staring match to look at her. 

"Undyne, this is Sable, my supervisor, and the one in charge of making sure no one breaks out the torches and pitchforks for anything that happens to or because of me down here. Sable, this is Undyne. She dropped a tree on me earlier, but it's cool, because I sort of indirectly asked for it." 

"AND I AM THE GREAT PAPYRUS." Papyrus breaks in from behind her, clearly offended at being left out. Shay fights down a smile.

"And he's the great Papyrus." she jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the skeleton in question. Papyrus crosses his arms and nods seriously. Sable looks like she's been hit with a brick. Shay clears her throat again and moves on quickly. "Anyway, there's no hard feelings and no one is going to sue. So. That's good." Undyne backs down a bit, turning to look at Shay. 

"I didn't realize you had a babysitter. What do you need watching for?" She looks disgruntled. Sable shakes her head, and finds her voice again.

"She's an exchange student, from Ebott University. I'm meant to check up on her once a week to make sure everything is going smoothly." Undyne wrinkles her nose, confused.

"I thought Human students all wore those matching outfits with the tiny skirts and the bows and the socks." Shay chokes, her laughter degenerating into a coughing fit at the mental image. Undyne looks deeply offended. "That's what all the histories Alphys has shown me say. Are they out of date?"

"Maybe in an Anime!" Shay wheezes. "I don't know what histories you've been watching, but I've never worn anything like that." Sable still looks a bit unbalanced, and Shay sobers enough to turn back to her and try and reassure her some more, while Undyne has what appears to be a crises of faith over in Papyrus' general direction. 

"Seriously Sable, I'm sorry about all this. I was at the library earlier and Erin mentioned that I could learn magic and then I met Papyrus and he said he could help and then he called Undyne and then we did something she _called_ training? but was mostly me running around while she threw things at me and then she dropped a tree on me and we had to come in here to get an ice pack but it's all been in the name of research and good fun, and, hey, I made some friends, so thats good, right?" Alright, perhaps taken all together it doesn't sound very reassuring, but Shay hasn't had so much fun in ages. Sable pats Shay on the arm feebly, her boundless well of energy from the day before all but vanished. 

"That's... good. I suppose. If you're sure. Since it's Captain Undyne there's not much I could do anyway." Sable takes a deep breath and seems to collect herself a bit, smoothing down the fur standing on end on her cheeks as she exhales. "Well, do try not to get into any more incidents like this for awhile? Please? I don't want the other students thinking this is the norm down here. I've had a hard enough time today as is settling them in. Quinn and his host family apparently get on like cats and dogs, and Brea was too shy to do much more than look around the hotel." Shay flaps a hand at her dismissively.

"How many times could I possibly get gigantic landmarks dropped on my head in a school year?" she tuts. Sable gives her a despairing look.

"None, I would've thought, so you're already ahead of the curve."

"Right. Well. Its even more statistically unlikely to happen a second time then, isn't it?" Shay grins. "And if it helps, I'm settling in great. My host family is awesome, I've made friends, I've even started on my research. Everything is hunky dory." Sable finally appears to relax a bit, giving Shay a tentative smile.

"Well, in that case I think you're actually doing quite well, comparatively. We'll take you to the healers and get you sorted after the meeting tomorrow, how's that." Shay winces. 

"I completely forgot about the meeting." 

"Every Wednesday at noon for the next ten months, Shay. _Please_ don't forget." Sable implores.

"It's totally fine. I won't be late."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you disappoint? I did say slow burn. SO slow. Don't worry, there's an actual conversation in the next chapter! With a not fucked-up face! I know, I spoil you guys.


	4. The One With the Origami Swans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we are guys, sorry for the long posting gap. This chapter fought me every step of the way, and ran way over the length limit I've set for myself, so it's been split, and the next one should be up a week or so. Enjoy!

"When will Undyne be here? Are you sure she's coming?"

A starry-eyed Pippin trails down the hall after Shay, as she makes the journey from the shower back to her room, toothbrush dangling from her mouth and swathed in one of the enormous fluffy white bathrobes she'd pilfered from the linen closet. Toothpaste dribbles down her chin as she snorts a laugh, and she has to pause in towel drying her hair to catch it before it drips onto the robe.

"Ah 'unno, 'Ippin." she slurs around the toothbrush. "'E 'idn't 'ay." She opens the door to her room and ducks into the half-bath to spit and rinse. When she turns around Pippin is seated on her bed, bouncing in place. The little Rabbit's shyness had vanished without a trace the day before, when she had come home in her tree-induced state of disarray and he had overheard Shay explaining to his mother that it had been from training with Captain Undyne. His delight in hearing that she had not only met, but made friends with the guard-captain had been eclipsed only by his almost apoplectic state of excitement at hearing that Undyne would be visiting tomorrow to drop off Shay's replacement cell phone. He'd been following her around and bombarding her with pleas the umpteenth re-re-retelling of the story ever since. While Shay was pleased at both her new friendship with Undyne, and the loss of Pippin's shyness around her, finding out that Undyne was something of a local celebrity in the form of an excited child calling out questions through the bathroom door while she tried to shower pine needles out of her hair was not how she would have chosen to do it. The barrage of pleading eyes and queries about Undyne's impending arrival had started the moment she opened her bedroom door this morning.

"But it'll be soon right? She promised she'd come, so she'll come?" Pippin looks up at her earnestly, and Shay sighs before taking him by the shoulders and steering him out the door into the hall.

"I'm sure it'll be soon, squirt. She said she'd have it before my meeting." she nudges him through the doorway and gently shuts the door behind him.

"But what if she doesn't come?" emanates plaintively from behind the wood, and Shays forehead impacts the doorframe with a solid _thunk._ Ouch. She turns back to the lump of clothes next to her suitcase and begins rummaging through it for an outfit. She's out of black leggings, _already._

"She'll come, Pippin. And then you can tell all your friends that Captain Undyne _personally_ visited your house, and all the kids in town will think you're super cool." she reassures, hopping on one leg as she tries to get her alien spaceship leggings on over her still-damp skin. She gives up and sits down on the bed to struggle them on. The tinkling sound of the bell over the door carries quietly up the stairs. Shay bites back a curse, wary of the little ears still lurking outside of her door, and throws the first shirt her hands touch, yanks on a pair of socks, and is just jamming her feet into her snowboots when Bunnebelle calls up the stair for her.

"Coming!"

Pippin is still pressed against the door pathetically when she opens it, and nearly takes a tumble. His excitement has clearly transmogrified back into shyness now that Undyne is actually here, and he clings to her wrist tightly as she starts down the stairs, doing what appears to be his utmost to send Shay ass over teakettle to the next floor. Undyne is waiting at the bottom of the stairs when she finally manages to haul Pippin onto the landing. She raises a brow at Shays newly acquired growth, and Pippin squeaks and ducks back behind Shay. Bunnebelle smiles fondly, and retreats back into the kitchen with an amused shake of her head.

"Pippin, Undyne, Undyne, Pippin." Shay sighs, shaking her wrist to regain circulation, gesturing introductions with the other. "I wish I'd known you were some kind of idol around here, Undyne, I would've brought him home an autograph. I haven't been able to pry him off me since I came home last night."

Undyne cackles and ducks around Shay to grin at Pippin. "What's up kiddo? You giving my pal here a rough time?" Pippin shakes his head furiously, eyes-wide. Undyne throws her head back and laughs. "Fu hu hu! You so are! Tell you what, how about you go fetch some of your friends, and when I'm done with Shay here, I'll show you guys a few moves?" Pippin looks at Undyne like she's just hung the moon, and nods furiously.

"I'll be right back!" he gasps, and is gone out the front door in a blur of white fur. Shay snorts and plops down on the couch in the corner.

"Very smooth, except for the part where there's going to be more of them converging on us in a few minutes." She points out. Undyne waves a hand dismissively.

"It's whatever. I had some free time this morning anyway. The kids are great! Pick stuff up quick. I visit the schools sometimes with Asgore." she grins, joining Shay on the couch. "They're better students than any of the guard ever were. Anyway-" She rummages in her pocket a moment before producing an old-fashioned slide cell phone and holding it out. Shay takes it out and flips it open.

"Alphy's knocked it together for you and connected it to the undernet, and I already stuck mine and Paps' numbers in there for you. I dunno what you had before, but it's a pretty basic one. Texts, calls, undernet, dimensional storage." Shay furrows her brow at the last feature.

"What-storage?"

"Dimensional storage? For your stuff? Oh shit- are you gonna be able to get your stuff out of the old one?" Undyne looks upset. Shay looks confused.

"You mean, like my phone numbers and stuff? I mean I've got those on my cloud, I dunno what else there is." Undyne snatches the phone back and fiddles with it.

"No, like, for your _stuff._ Do human phones not do that?" She finishes tapping at the phone and picks up a throw pillow from the couch. "Like-" she taps the pillow with the phone, and the pillow disappears, instantly and completely with a _pop_ of displaced air. "Like that." she waggles the phone at Shay. Shay shrieks in excitement and dives for the phone.

"Holy _shit_! How did it do that?!" she nearly slides off the couch grabbing for the cell, ignoring Undyne's snort of laughter at her enthusiasm. "Human phones do not in any way, shape, and or form do anything like that! Where does it...?" she prods at the screen, where a tiny thumbnail of the throw pillow hovers in the interface. When she presses it, the pillow poofs into existence and drops into her lap. "This is the best thing I've ever seen. Ever. In my whole life, oh my god. Dimensional storage? Like, pocket dimensions? All your phones do this?" Undyne nods.

"Yup. The magitech came out when I was a kid. Way easier than carrying backpacks." Shay's eyes light up at the mention of backpacks.

"I'll be right back!" She speeds off up the stairs, and Undyne listens as a muffled thumps come from the ceiling. Shay dashes back down, arms stacked high with a heap of miscellanea. She drops it onto her previous spot on the couch and rocks back onto her heels. "Ok, how do I do this?"

Undyne spends the next ten minutes showing Shay how to put her stuff into her shiny new pocket dimensions, the last being her now empty backpack, which disappears into the aether just as a pack of children crowd through the door and spill into the lobby. Shay regards her new phone with satisfaction, the screen now crowded with tiny icons of books and pens.

"You are the best Undyne. The total best. It's you. And also Alphys. Holy cow, thank Alphys for me, she's the best too." she gushes, summoning and dismissing her favorite thermos over and over. Undyne preens.

"I'll tell her you said so, she'll be thrilled." she surveys the crush of children still jostling for space as the pour into the lobby. "I think I've got some rugrats to whip into shape now though. And, don't you have a meeting in like an hour and a half?" Shay bolts to her feet.

"Oh sh-crap. Oh man, How long does the ferry take? I gotta go! Thanks Undyne!"

Undyne waves her out of the Inn, cackling. "See ya later nerd!"

 

 

 

"Hello! You run the ferry right?"

The River Person stares at her a moment, bending slightly to get a better look. Shay blinks up at them, awkwardly, the silence uncomfortable after her cheery greeting. After a long moment, they nod to themselves and straighten up. They hold out a hand to help her onto the boat.

"There you are then. I was wondering when the next story would start! Where are we going today?"

"Ah..." Shay accept the proffered hand, and steps onto the boat, which is rocking in the opposite rhythm to the gentle river waves lapping at it. "Hotland. Sorry, what story?"

The River Person pats the top of the boat affectionately and begins to hum a cheery little tune as it surges forward, blithely and obviously ignoring her question. Shay settles back into the boat and folds her legs with a sigh. The River Person doesn't seem to steer the boat by any means she can see, and they never let up their cheery tune. Shay contents herself with watching the ever changing scenery slide by, ice and stone giving way to glowing algae and cattails giving way to obsidian and red earth, the air growing ever warmer. Shay removes her jacket and stores it in her phone.

The landing draws into sight as the come around the bend, and abruptly the River Person stops their humming. The boat glides to a smooth stop in the precise center of the makeshift dock, and they hand her down politely.

"See you soon!"

Shay waves and climbs the stairs to Hotland.

Hotland is as different from Snowdin as Snowdin had been from Mt. Ebott's surface, and she spends a respectable portion of the short walk into Hotland proper simply gawking. The entire town is built over an aquifer of lava, the landmasses the buildings cling to positioned on the more stable pieces of land, enormous with fault lines spidering between. Stone bridges span the chasms, and the blasts of heat when walking over them is nearly overwhelming. In the center rises the closest thing to a skyscraper one could possibly get underground, deep purple brick and trimmed with golden robot statues and curving lettering proclaiming it the _MTT HOTEL AND RESORT_. Shay blinks up at it from three blocks away. Sable had absolutely not been kidding when she had said it was impossible to miss. The only thing in the entire space larger is what she assumes to be the core, the hulking twist of pipe and machinery behind the hotel, puffing steam into the air high above.

She makes it to the hotel only five minutes late, stepping into the thankfully air-conditioned lobby and wiping sweat from her forehead with a grateful moan. The inside is just as tastelessly opulent as the exterior, with a gigantic metal robot statue fountaining water over a basin and onto the carpet, and signs for both a burger joint _and_ formal restaurant. Monsters mill around the lobby, in far more varieties than the almost exclusively furry Snowdin variety. Shay spots a six armed Snake, a business casual Manticor, and a harried looking bright green Dragon, just in the immediate vicinity. She whistles lowly, impressed. She hasn't even seen the Capital yet, and Hotland is already making Snowdin look like a tiny country town. She pops her jacket out of her cell phone as she walks across the hallway towards the nicer restaurant, using it to wipe the worst of the sweat off before she enters. She begins to notice, as she ambles down the hall into the dining area, that everything seems to have a robot on it. The exact _same_ robot in fact. Shay has never been a particular fan of theme hotels, but this one's tackiness is so dedicated that it almost wraps right back around into a hilarious sort of charm.

The hostess, a decidedly rotund bright green fish, directs her to a table in the back where Sable and her classmates are waiting, conspicuously silent, before backing away with a series of overly formal bows. Sable notices her approach and beckons her over frantically. She look exhausted. Quinn is slouched sullenly in his chair, arms folded, gaze burning a hole in the ficus plant a few feet away. Brea, gasps audibly when she sees Shay, covers her mouth with her hands.

"OH my goodness! Are you all right?" she half stands from her chair, stretches a hand towards Shay's face. Shay has to pause a moment before remembering that, oh, yeah, she has the mother of all black eyes right now, in addition to the cut on her cheek from Undyne's spear. She hadn't had time to examine it properly this morning with an overzealous Rabbit child banging down the bathroom door. Quinn quits his staring contest with the ficus to scrutinize her. His lip curls a bit, in that overdramatic, snobby way Shay had until this moment thought only happened on television or around open sewers.

"Well, I'm glad it's not just me having difficulties with the locals." he sneers. Shay rolls her eyes, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Sable looks like she would very much like to show Quinn _exactly_ the sort of problems he could be having with the locals.

"Hardly. I got a tree dropped on me doing research." she says, nonchalant. She drops into her chair with a plop. "Sable's taking me to the healer after this. No big deal." Brea looks unconvinced, and Quinn stares as though Shay has sprouted a second head. Sable sighs and picks up her menu.

"As I told you before, Quinn, I don't know what it's like on the surface, but down here we simply don't have the room to give you each private housing, especially in the capitol. Your host family has given you a very nice living space." her cheerful tone is strained, and Shay would be willing to bet this is the argument that had ended in the stony silence she had arrived to. Quinn tsks, but says nothing else, pushing his glasses up and opening his menu with a pointed _snap_.

Shay gawks at him. "How much space do you need? It's not like you need a whole house to do your research in. And, wait- aren't you an anthropologist? Living with a monster family makes more sense anyway. This way you get the real experience! And it's not like you have to pay, or make your own meals."

"My host family has children. They're insufferably loud, and they kept asking me all sorts of questions yesterday while I was trying to unpack. They wouldn't leave me alone!" Quinn looks like he swallowed a lemon, and Shay can't help but laugh.

"Thats what kids do, Quinn. Monster or not."

"Well I hardly asked to be placed in a house with children, now did I?"

Shay frowns, and opens her mouth to tell him exactly how much of an ass he's being, but Brea cuts in before she can start.

"Um. What do you mean you got a tree dropped on you, Shay?" she is clearly just trying to change the subject, but Shay lets it go. She launches into the tale of her 'research' and meeting with Undyne and Papyrus, so enthused by her story that she misses Quinn and Brea's growing looks of dismay as she recounts the fight and the acquisition of her 'battle wounds'.

"And my phone got a bit smashed up by the tree I guess, but this morning Undyne dropped me off a new one, and, hang on-" she scrambles to get her phone out of her pocket. She stores her jacket away as they watch, then summons it back. "Check that shit out! Isn't it amazing? You guys should get monster phones too!" Quinn at least looks somewhat impressed, but Brea shakes her head, looking stricken.

"So you just... went with them? Right after you met? And let them attack you, and when they dropped a tree on you you _didn't run screaming_?"

"Of course not!" Shay laughs. "Undyne's great, and she didn't give off any creepy murder vibes or anything. And Papyrus didn't even throw anything, he was just the cheering section." She pauses, realizing for the first time that her peers are really not taking this story in the lighthearted spirit in which it's meant. "Seriously, guys, they're really nice. They felt terrible about my eye, and that part was an accident anyway. And anyway, it worked! I can feel my soul now!" Quinn looks unconvinced.

"Are you sure that wasn't just the concussion talking?" he says dryly. Shay snorts.

"Hardly. Check this out!" Shay had spent over an hour the night before unable to sleep, mentally prodding at the electric warmth buzzing beneath her ribs. She could feel it constantly now, a tingling sort of sensation at the back of her mind, but only distracting unless you focused on it, like your breathing. Now that she could feel it, she could understand Erin's horror at the notion of its absence. It's like a heartbeat, constant and reassuring. It had taken a few attempts, but she had managed to pull it into the open again, and she had fallen asleep staring into its liquid gold depths, its warm glow a brilliant reminder of how much her life had changed in the span of a single day. It comes the first time she beckons now, and she cups it carefully and presents it to the others, who stare at it as though she's holding a live grenade instead of a soul. Quinn's eyes go huge behind his glasses. Shay puts it back quickly, the glow too conspicuous in the dim room, making another face at the unpleasant squishing sensation as it re-enters her body.

"No, I suppose that's not a concussion. My god, that's not natural." Quinn breathes. Shay frowns at him.

"It's magic, dude. By its very definition its _super_ natural." she deadpans. Quinn's poor attitude is quickly beginning to rub her the wrong way. Brea, however, looks enchanted.

"Its so pretty though! I didn't even know we could do that! I don't think I want to be squished by a tree to see mine though." she laments. Sable chuckles tiredly.

"Please, no more trees." Shay and Brea laugh, and for a moment the sour mood seems to lighten. The waitress, with the excellent timing found only in top shelf restaurants, comes by at that moment to take their orders. She hovers patiently by the table, fish tail swaying rhythmically, as Quinn cross examines her on the contents of the food. Shay is completely unsurprised to learn that he doesn't trust the magic in the food. Also he's vegan. Of course he is. Shay only has to glance at the menu to realize that she doesn't recognize anything on it. Everything is subtly different from the human variants of the food. She picks at random from the drink section, something called a Sea Tea, and passes over the entrees entirely.

"Why don't you bring me whatever your favorite is?" she smiles at the waitress. "I'm not picky."

The waitress floats away gracefully when they finish, and after a brief pause, Quinn turns back to Shay.

"Are you sure that that's safe?" he needles. Shay stares bemusedly at him.

"The food? I'm sure whatever she brings'll be fine. She works here, and waitresses always know what's up." she shrugs.

"Not the food, the magic! Humans don't have magic, Shay. Studying it is all well and good, but popping your soul out of your body can't possibly be good for you! You don't know how it's going to effect you." His face is red with irritation, and Sable puts a hand over her eyes with a sigh. Shay blinks at him, taken aback.

"It's _fine_ Quinn. Monsters do it and it doesn't hurt them. And you know as well as I do that humans used to do magic! I'm just picking up where they left off!" She argues. The sheer strength of his disagreement is throwing Shay off. She's not stupid, she's aware that letting strange monsters throw pointy objects at her was perhaps not her brightest idea. But she's in one piece, and it had worked out just fine. Moreover, she'd made friends. And in one day she's accomplished more than she had in five years of college study.

"You're not a monster, Shay. Humans haven't had magic for hundreds of years! You have no idea what you're doing!" Quinn's tone is incredulous.

"Well, no. I don't." Shay shrugs, leaning back in her chair and picking up the roll of silverware. Quinn pauses at her matter of fact tone. Shay unrolls the napkin from the cutlery and folds it idly. "No one does though. At all. In the whole world. I mean, someone's gonna figure it out eventually though, right? May as well be me. And anyway, too late now." Quinn sputters and turns to Sable, who has clearly given up on having a nice polite lunch meeting and is contemplating the wine list.

"Sable, you can't tell me you're going to let this continue. This is completely unsafe." he wheedles. Shay snorts, surveying her napkin swan and adjusting the beak.

"Yeah, because this is coming from a place of concern, not from you being an uptight fun-wrecker." she mutters. Sable shoots her a look, and Shay quiets down with a huff. Sable turns back to Quinn, takes a deep breath.

"Unfortunately Quinn, Shay was admitted to the exchange program with the intent to study magic. This is well within her declaration of intent, as she is doing it for research. Even if it wasn't, I am here to supervise your studies and help you adjust to life Underground, not to police your lives. She's done nothing illegal, or anything that would break the agreement with the university. I'll have no more discussion on the matter if it means you're going to attack each other." she flags down the waitress as she passes by and taps one of the selections with a claw, giving her a strained smile as she nods and floats away.

Quinn gapes at Sable. "We've been down here less than two days, and she's managed to make friends with people who challenged her to some kind of crazy magic duel, destroyed public property, and got her hurt. That's completely fine?!" Shay shifts uncomfortably in her seat and begins to tear strips in her swans wings to make feathers. It sounds so negative when he puts it like that.

"No more discussion!" Sable rubs her temples, looking frustrated. Their plates arrive, and with the excuse of food the table descends into the same uncomfortable silence that had pervaded when Shay arrived. Shay returns the waitress' smile when she sets down an admittedly tasty looking seaweed salad, but finds her appetite has all but disappeared.

Sable eats quickly, and drains her glass of wine in record time. A quick glance around the table makes it very apparent that none of her charges are particularly interested in eating, their plates barely touched. Brea is rolling a grape around and around the edges of her bowl. Shay has begun the process of pushing her seaweed into a swan shape on the plate. Sable claps her paws together loudly.

"Well. Shay's appointment with the healer is coming up very quickly, so we'll have to take our leave. You two take as much time as you like here. Same time next week alright? Come along Shay."

Shay scrambles her seaweed swan quickly before pushing her chair back and standing up. Quinn shoots her one last meaningful look as she turns to follow Sable. She ignores him.

 

 

 

Shay descends the steps down to the River Person's boat with considerably lower spirits than when she had ascended them. Even the excitement of visiting the healer, a kindly old Satyr who had fixed her eye with a gesture and given her a lollipop, had quite managed to lift her from her funk.

The river person gives a friendly bob of their head and heads her into the boat. "Why so glum?"

Shay shrugs and pops the sucker out of her mouth before settling into the boat. "My classmates are jerks. And mean. And fuddy duddies. Well, the one is at least." The River Person _hmms_ as the boat pulls away from the landing. Shay refuses to be surprised that the boat is having no trouble moving against the river current.

"That's a shame."

Shay relaxes back into the boat as it pulls out into the deeper water and they pick up speed, gnawing on her sucker. The River Person strikes up a merry little tune again, an aimless ditty of tra la la's. Shay closes her eyes and listens.

"Tra la la. Have you been to the palace yet?" the question jerks Shay out of her lull, and she squints up at the River Person in the dim light of the river tunnel. "I hear its terribly big. Lots of rooms and doors and halls. My friend got lost there once."

Shay shrugs off the abrupt question. "Not yet, no. We might get a tour at some point. Sable's supposed to show us all the Landmarks and whatnot." The River Person _hmms_ again.

"You never know who you'll meet, getting lost in a place like that." They pat the carven head of the boat. "Do you mind dogs terribly? He'd like to run."

"Um. I guess not? What-" Shay doesn't have time to finish speaking before the boat surges up out of the water and begins to _run_ , speeding along the top of the water on four wooden legs she could have sworn weren't there before. She clings to the side with a gasp. The River Person seems completely unaffected by the sudden inertia, standing tall at the front of the boat as though they were still meandering sedately down the river. With a breathless laugh, Shay struggles her way onto her knees and leans to the side to get a better view. The wooden dogs head at the prow turns to meet her gaze, winks, and turns back again as the boat begins to run even faster.

The reach Snowdin in half the time it had taken before, and the River Person hands a breathless and windblown Shay out of the boat. The boat nudges it head under her hand, and she scratches it behind the ears for a moment, before it turns to face front again and falls wood-still again. She beams at the River Person.

"Thank you!"

"Come again any time."


	5. The One Where They Reenact a C.M. Coolidge Painting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys I worked so hard. And then I deleted it and worked hard again and then I deleted it again. This chapter was dragged from me kicking and screaming, and if I could smack it on its stupid chapter face I would. It exists now though, and I NEVER HAVE TO WRITE IT AGAIN. I'm waiting for lighting to strike my tablet before I hit the submit button or something, so if you're reading this we're already ahead of my expectations. Enjoy!

Shays chipper mood fades quickly after she leaves the River person behind and trudges back into town. Her sucker crunches to bits beneath her teeth, leaving her gnawing on the bare stick thoughtfully as she walks. Quinn's unfavorable reaction to her adventures shadows her thoughts. Who was he to claim she didn't know what she was getting herself into with Undyne and Papyrus when he couldn't even get along with his host family? He was clearly the worst anthropologist ever. Still, a lingering thread of doubt makes its home in her gut.

She pauses in the middle of the now treeless town square, pursing her lips as she looks down the road at the Snowed Inn. She doesn't particularly relish the thought of laying around in her still mostly bare bedroom and sulking, and she's in no frame of mind to go to the library and get any work done. She glances over her shoulder towards Grillby's. Sitting alone at a bar and sulking into a drink is marginally better than doing it in bed with no drink, right? Totally.

The inside of the bar and grill is quiet, the lunching hour just past and with a few to go until dinner, but the smell of grilled meat and french fries lingers. Her stomach gurgles, reminding her how little of lunch she'd actually eaten in between being offended and making swans. Perhaps a second lunch is in order as well.

The tables are empty, save for that same group of Dogs sitting at their table playing poker, a Fox nursing a soda with his snout buried in a book, and Grillby himself wiping down the bar. He looks up as Shay enters, gives her a friendly nod. A few of the Dogs glance up from their cards to give the air a cursory sniff.

"Ooh!" the Rottweiler gives another sniff, turning to squint at her. "Is that that new human again? I think that's the new human!" he slings an arm over the back of his chair and leans towards her, snuffling. The front legs of his chair leave the floor. One of the hooded ones snags him by the collar and yanks him back around.

"Didn't Aunt Canie teach you not to stare, Doggo?" Doggo adopts a mock wounded look.

"You know full well Mom's eyes were even worse than mine Dogamy. So insensitive." Dogamy flicks a poker chip at Doggo and sniggers when it bounces off his nose. The other hooded Dog rolls her eyes and reaches over to yank Dogamy's ear.

"Honestly you two, can we not have _one game_ without you two having a go at each other?" The table descends into petty familial bickering, though the jabs lack any real bite. Shay shakes her head with a smile and resumes her journey to the bar.

Grillby stows away his washrag as she swings herself up onto a barstool. He surveys her a moment before tilting his head. She catches a brief, flickering smile.

"Ice?"

Shay snorts.

"Not now thanks, I've managed to avoid the whole 'bodily harm' thing thus far today. And the pine needles. Those don't wash out by the way, it sucked." Grillby crackles a bit, amused, and shakes his head.  
"Food then?"

"Yes, please. I'm starving." He slides a menu across the bar to her, and waits politely while she scans it. The options are limited, but remarkably close to anything you'd find in any human bar, she's pleasantly surprised to note. Burgers, fries, ice cream, pizza and the like. At least she isn't going to have to play the 'ask the waiter' trick every time she eats here. "A cheeseburger please. And a rum and coke." Grillby pauses. He'd already turned towards the kitchen, but he steps back over.

"Ah... I don't think I have that." He actually turns the menu around and glances at it, as though he needs to double check. Shay facepalms, feeling dumb. While the food found in the Underground has been pretty similar so far, the bottles lining the shelves in front of her are unfamiliar. There isn't a single recognizable label. She's pretty sure the shimmery purple bottle with the bone floating in it isn't found in your average human Wine & Spirits.

"Right, you wouldn't. Sorry. It's a human drink, liquor and pop. I wasn't thinking about it. Okay, scratch that, since I have no idea what monsters drink. The little differences here keep tripping me up." Grillby pauses, drumming his fingers on the bar thoughtfully, and Shay is momentarily distracted watching. His hands are, like the rest of him, made of fire, but clearly defined, like flame trapped under hand-shaped glass. It reminds her vaguely of the electric plasma lamps you sometimes see in novelty stores back on the surface. The quiet _tap tap tap_ on the polished wood creates a disconnect in her brain, sounding far too solid for something that shouldn't have substance, and she finds herself zoning out, trying to figure out how that _works_.

"Just a moment." Shay snaps out of her reverie, embarrassed, in time to see him disappear into the kitchen. He reappears in record time with a burger and fries, setting them in front of her with click. "Now, what kind of liquor is... rum, was it? Let's see what we can do."

"Oh, jeez, wow, no, you really don't have to bother." she protests. "Seriously. I wouldn't know where to start. "

"I insist." He hovers by the shelves, waiting.

"What is it with everyone in this town being polite and helpful to a fault?" Shay rolls her eyes, but smiles. "Alright. It's made from molasses. Processed sugarcane? Which, theres sugar here, how do you grow that? Magic I guess, that's the answer to everything here. Um. It's light to golden brown usually. Slightly sweet, but mostly tastes like nail polish remover. Pirates like it? But that might just be the movies because I'm pretty sure port was just as big a deal back then." Grillby peruses the shelves as she rambles, pulling down three bottles and lining them up on the back counter. "And then coke is just brown pop. Cola, i guess."

Grillby does an excellent job of making sense of her diatribe, mixing three small drinks in shot glasses with each of the chosen liquors and something that looks remarkably similar to coca cola. He sets each in front of her as he finishes, forming a neat little row on the bar. He puts the bottles away, carefully, then turns and watches her expectantly. Shay surveys them, impressed. Each is a slightly different color, one edging out of brown and into a pale purple, but five years of end-of-finals celebrations has taught her not to judge.

"Wow. Here goes nothing then." She selects the one on the far left and starts in. The first is much, much fizzier than a rum and coke should be, and almost sickly sweet. The second is incredibly bitter, and tingles like hot peppers, making her cough a bit. The third, though, is a damn good facsimile of a rum and coke for guesswork and a half assed description. She grins at him, pleased, and slides the glass back over.

"Thats actually not too far from the real thing. Bravo sir. I am duly impressed. Wait, that wasn't magic too, was it?" Grillby takes the glasses back and turns to mix her a full sized one, looking pleased. Shay tugs the cheeseburger plate over and nibbles on a fry while she watches. The winner is the purple one, a bright turquoise bottle with 'Schwiftys' emblazoned on the label, and a weird triangle shape. From the look of the shelves and their cadre of oddly shaped containers, monsters aren't as married to the whole 'round bottle' thing as humans are. She glances back at the rest of the bar, now completely empty except for the Dogs, and out the window at the darkening square. "Oh, thats right! I wanted to apologize."

Grillby glances back up at her, questioningly. "For the whole thing with the tree." Shay clarifies. "On your bar. The one Undyne threw at me." He crackles a bit and shakes his head.

"You didn't throw it."

"Yeah, well. I provoked it I guess? And apologizing seems proper? I guess it did more damage to my face than your front walk though." she trails off, nodding her thanks when he sets her drink in front of her. A thought occurs to her as she takes a sip. "Wait. Did Undyne ever move it? I didn't see it when I was walking back from the river. Where did she put it? That was not a small tree for her to just carry off somewhere."

Grillby shrugs, unhelpfully.

"That woman is a force of nature." Shay smiles ruefully. Grillby does a last once over to make sure she has everything she needs before turning back to the bar. He pulls out a pen and pad of paper from a drawer beneath the bar and settles at the back counter, glancing between the shelves and his notepad. Doing inventory, Shay guesses. She tucks into her meal, dividing her attention between her burger and idly trying to puzzle out how he can rest his hand on the page without burning it to cinders.

She's worked her way through most of her food in thoughtful silence by the time he pauses and straightens up. She watches out of the corner of her eye as he takes his glasses off, polishes them on a corner of his shirt, and then replaces them back on his face. His noseless, earless face. With nothing to hold them there. Shay makes a quiet noise of frustration.

"Seriously, how does that _work_? Any of it?" she mutters, quietly. To her mortification, Grillby hears her, pausing to turn and look back at her, expression unreadable. Shay, to her everlasting relief, is not a blusher, so at least she can live her life with the comforting certainty that the heat suffusing her face isn't visible. "Oh god, that was out loud. Ignore me, holy cow I am really rude."

Grillby very slowly reaches up and adjusts his glasses. Shay fights the urge to smack her head on the bar, because apparently this entire day has been set aside for the universe to beat her over the head with the knowledge that she doesn't know when to quit.

"Okay, I think since I'm probably going to end up here a lot, what with you being the only restaurant in the entire town and all, now is a good time to apologize for what is sure to be a future filled with a million unintentionally rude questions. I'm really sorry in advance for that. I mean, I don't actually know the threshold for monster rudeness but I'm assuming I'm gonna get there at some point, since you're all really, really nice and I have a penchant for verbal overflow, but I swear I'm not trying to be rude I'm researching. For history. And cultural outreach and whatever else they sent me here for. For school. To learn." She slowly sinks lower on her stool as she maunders, wishing that she could decipher his expression. Or fall through the floor to the center of the earth. Or control her mouth. She's not feeling choosy at the moment. "Right. So. The takeaway from that is 'feel free to ignore me.'"

Grillby doesn't move for a second, making sure she's done before speaking. He flickers a moment, and Shay would swear, if she didn't know better, that he had worn the briefest of smiles. He taps the frames of his glasses.

"Magic."

Shay bursts out in choking, half relieved laughter. She sits back on her stool and takes a drink to clear her throat. "I think hearing that as an explanation for everything I ask about is going to get very old very quickly." Grillby shakes his head, abandoning his inventory to lean against the bar a few feet away.

"What are you researching?"

"Ah," Shay tries and fails to fight down a smile. "Magic? Okay it doesn't count as a cop-out when I say it. I'm making that a rule." He fixes her with a look that somehow manages to convey what absolute rubbish that is without words _or_ facial features. It's very impressive.

"Okay, seriously. I have the dubious honor of being human kind's guinea pig down here. They're calling it a foreign exchange program. Three human students in the underground, three monster students at my university. I guess the government thinks a few twenty-somethings aren't scary or important enough to cause any trouble. I heard they didn't want to risk any of your scientists up above, because they're stupid mistrustful jerks. Anyway, I spend a year down here, writing my dissertation, learning about magic, since magical history is my specialty, -which was actually up until a year ago something that I got a lot of grief for since humans don't have magic anymore, which indirectly ties in to the tree debacle yesterday- and then at the end of it if I haven't caused any trouble and my work isn't terrible, they hand me my degree and I go on my merry way. And, on a more political note, I got the sense this was kind of a test? And if this goes well they'll consider lifting some of the DMZ restrictions."

There is a clatter from the poker table, and Shay turns to see Dogamy scrambling to pick up his chips, and the other dogs trying very hard to look busy.

"Um." she blinks at them. Doggo gives up the ruse and turns to squint at her.

"Did you hear anything else?" The fluffy white Dog at his elbow nudges him sharply in the ribs. "Don't give me that LD, you wanna know too. It's been a year and we haven't even been able to leave the mountain!"

Shay winces. "I know, it's crap. There's plenty of humans who are _dying_ to talk to you guys. It's just the stupid bureaucrats. If it were up to me... Well. It's not." She turns her drink around and around as she speaks, painfully aware of how it sounds. The human government's reticence had been a topic of hot debate around her campus, the students and faculty split in their opinions of how the situation should be handled.

The lady Dog throws a chip at Doggo. "Knock it off Doggo, can't you see you're making her uncomfortable? Sheesh." she slings an arm over the back of her chair and surveys Shay. "Hey, why don't you come play a round with us? Some of us aren't total fools, I promise."

Shay hesitates, eyes sweeping over the mess of chips and cards scattered over the table, the configuration unfamiliar.. "I'm not sure I know the game."

"It's just pawtuckit, we can teach you. Come on, we may as well pump you for info respectably instead of eavesdropping."

Shay glances at Grillby, not wanting to be rude. He makes a shooing motion.

"Alright, alright." she slides off the stool and ambles over, taking the empty chair they swipe from the table next to them.

"I'm Dogaressa, and this is Dogamy, Doggo, Lesser Dog, and Greater Dog." Dogaressa introduces them, indicating each in a circle around the table.

"I'm Shay. Nice to meet you all. So how does this 'Pawtuckit' work?"

Pawtuckit, as it turns out, is deceptively simple. The learning curve is about on par with 'Go Fish', a simpler version of human poker, and she picks it up quickly. The bluffing aspect however, is next to impossible when you're playing with dogs who can hear your heartbeat and smell your reactions to your cards, and Shay quickly gives up on the notion of winning. Instead, she spectates the bitter rivalries the table seems to engender, the most obvious being between Doggo and Dogamy, and Lesser Dog and Lesser Dog. (She figures out very quickly that Lesser Dog is so terrible at cards that they more or less just let him sit at the table to feel included.) They also, after Doggo's original question, don't bother asking her about the surface. They mostly seem interested in gossip.

"We're all part of the royal guard actually, under Captain Undyne." Dogaressa seems to have taken it upon herself to fill Shay in on all the basic happenings in Snowdin, chattering away as she deals the round. "You've already met her, obviously."

She pauses to sniff the air as everyone checks their hand, side-eyeing Greater Dog with a grin and pushing a tall stack of chips to the middle. Greater Dog growls quietly and folds. Shay looks at her own subpar cards sadly and pitches them into the discard as well.

"There's not much for us to do nowadays though, since there's no point in watching for humans anymore, and King Asgore hardly needs the entire guard with him when he visits the surface." Dogamy shrugs, barely glancing at his cards before betting. "So for now we're just guarding this table. And Snowdin I guess."

"Yeah, safest table in the Underground." Doggo snorts. He leans forwards to shove half his chips into the pot. "Just give in Dogamy, you're not fooling anyone."

"Hey, Captain Undyne says when the Upper City is finished in a few years, we'll all guard that. So it's not like we're out of a job." Dogaressa chides. Dogamy's ears droop as he folds, tossing his cards down with a bit more force than neccesary. Shay's fairly certain he hasn't won a hand since she sat down. Doggo and Dogaressa reveal their cards, Dogaressa's smile going saccharine-sweet as she takes the round. "Just give in, Doggo. You're not fooling anyone." she chirrups, winking at him.

"Hah, hardly! Someone'll get you eventually 'Ressa. Anyway, King Asgore didn't have the heart to tell us to take a hike for a couple years. We're actually getting paid to sit here right now." Doggo fumbles in his pocket for a dog treat and lights it. "I'm thinking of it as a paid vacation."

Shay raises her eyebrows. "Seriously? That's crazy. He's just paying you to do nothing for _years_? That's... No strings? Nothing?" The Dogs exchange a look, before bursting into laughter.

"Oh man," Doggo chuckles, wiping at his eyes with his free paw. "You obviously haven't met King Asgore yet. I'm pretty sure the guy doesn't know _how_ to be mean. He's a giant fluffy marshmallow."

"Just the thought of firing any of the guard would break his heart." Dogamy shuffles the deck and deals another round. "Nah, he'll do right by us. No doubt about that."

Business starts to pick up as they play, Snowdin's less culinarily inclined trickling in for their dinner as the 'sun' goes down. Most of them pause to gawk a bit at the human casually playing cards with the royal guard Dogs, greeting her with awkward little waves or shy nods as she catches them staring. She smiles back cheerfully, her gloomy mood long forgotten. The bar is warm and cozy, filled with steady chatter and the flicker of firelight as Grillby moves back and forth taking orders and bringing drinks. Once or twice she catches herself completely forgetting that she isn't back on the surface.

It's getting late by the time Shay bids farewell to the dogs and leaves. It's the first time she's been outside at night in Snowdin, and the false moonlight throws her for a moment as she automatically pauses to look for the moon. Her phone buzzes in her pocket as she crosses the square, and she startles a bit. She hadn't had a message since she entered the underground and lost the signal.

_Paps and I got some time tomorrow to pick back up on your training, if you're free._

Shay shudders involuntarily at Undyne's text. She still aches a bit, knees and shoulders sore even after the healing from the first workout Undyne had put her through. The magic must be learned though... She wrinkles her nose as she responds in the affirmative. The answering text is immediate.

_Sweet! Tomorrow afternoon then. Paps'll grab ya and bring you over to waterfall._

Shay perks up immediately. At least she'll get to see another part of the Underground.


	6. The One With a Really Excellent BLT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuses for the lateness my friends. Turns out it's just really REALLY hard to motivate myself to write when I'm not actively using it as a procrastination technique.

Undyne's house looks like a giant scary fish head.

Shay had just begun to be lulled into a sense of normalcy in the underground, with Snowdin's cute little cabins and Hotland's brick and mortar towers, but the next morning bright and early she finds herself walking through the sharptoothed maw of Waterfalls finest architecture with Papyrus.

"Cool isn't it?" Undyne crows, pushing a button beside the door. "Alphys did the door for me." The teeth snap shut again, making Shay jump a bit before she breaks into a delighted grin.

"Oh dang, that's awesome!" Shay leans over and mashes the button a few times, the teeth extending and retracting like the fish is chewing. "Why do all houses not have teeth?"

"Because not everyone has EXCELLENT TASTE like I do! Fu hu hu!" Undyne cackles. "I've had to build it nine or ten times now, but its so worth it. Their girlfriends are also way less cool than mine."

Shay pauses her button mashing. "Wait, why did you have to rebuild so often?"

Undyne pauses, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. "All sorts of reasons. There was the time with Frisk of course. The dance off. That time Paps brought Mettaton over." She ticks each off on her fingers as she lists.

"REMEMBER WHEN WE MADE CHILI?" Papyrus chimes in helpfully.

"Oh yeah, the chili. And when we had everyone over for movie night, Frisk and Asgore and Alphys and Sans."

"AND WHEN YOU TRIED DÉCOUPAGE."

"You said you wouldn't bring up the découpage, Papyrus!" Undyne shudders at the memory, her gills fluttering with discomfort. "Yeah, so the place has been wrecked a lot. Anyway, come sit!"

Undyne grabs Shays wrist and steers her towards the kitchen table, shoving her helpfully into a chair and plopping down on the other side. Papyrus pauses, surveying the empty chair next to each of them, before taking the one next to Shay and setting it on the side, equidistant between them.

"Okay, so yesterday while you were off doin' nerd stuff, Paps and I got together and drew up a game plan." Undyne reaches beneath the table and extracts a massive rolled up poster and smacks it down on the table. "Since we have _no_ clue what we need to train a human, we just started with the basics."

Papyrus unrolls the poster with a flourish. It's covered surprisingly good likenesses of Shay, little numbered cartoon drawings of her engaged in various activities. Shay doing squats, Shay doing sit-ups, Shay running, Shay swordfighting. Swimming, reading, standing on her head, meditating under a waterfall, and a slightly larger one off to the side of her wearing a chefs hat stirring a massive cooking pot. There are dozens of them.

"TA-DA!" Papyrus beams. "YOUR VERY OWN TRAINING REGIMEN! UNDYNE DID THE DRAWINGS HERSELF!"

Shay blanches, leaning forward to pore over the 'list'. "Uh. I mean I'm not an expert or anything, but how exactly is skateboarding going to help me learn magic?"

Undyne scoffs. "It's good for your balance! And your core muscles! Look, just trust me, strong body, strong mind and all that. And.." she shifts in he seat, rubbing at her shoulder awkwardly. "I also talked to Alphys about it. She's busy for a couple days finishing the elevators to the surface, but after that she wants to meet you and talk about it. Just in case this doesn't work."

Shay gives up on mentally sorting the dizzying number of tasks and looks back up at Undyne and Papyrus. "So this is just until we talk to Alphys?"

"ALPHYS SAID THAT WHATEVER WE DO UNTIL THEN IS 'TOTALLY PROBABLY FINE AND CAN'T HURT TO TRY', SO FOR NOW YOU GET TO HANG OUT WITH US! I KNOW IT MUST BE VERY EXCITING FOR YOU!"

Shay wrinkles her nose at her cartoon dopplegängers. "'Can't hurt to try,' huh? I've had more ringing endorsements. So which ones are we doing today?"

Undyne points to the colored numbers by each image. "Color coded. That bit was Paps' idea." Papyrus grins proudly.

"EACH COLOR IS FOR A DIFFERENT DAY."

"But, hang on-" The paper crackles as Shay pulls in into her lap to squint at it. Teal, Orange, and Yellow. "There's only three colors."

"Yeah, we started you off easy. Eventually we'll split it in half." Undyne waves dismissively. "Don't worry about it, should only take a week or so. Just trust us!"

"There's like fifty things on here!"

"You'll get the hang of it in no time! No sweat. I'll let Paps handle it on the days I gotta work, so you won't have time to lose momentum either!"

"I'LL BE THE BEST TRAINER EVER SHAY, I PROMISE!" Papyrus leans over and pats her proudly on the shoulder.

Shays stomach plummets like a rock at the cheerful looks beaming down on her, but she manages a weak smile. "This is great guys, really, but isn't this gonna take up a ton of your time? Like, a _ton_?"

Undyne just waves off her concerns. "Nah, don't worry about it. Paps and I do this most days anyway, it's not like we wouldn't be training without you. Besides, I do this for all the new guard recruits when they start off." She starts to shrug dismissively, pausing halfway when she catches Shays incredulous gaze. "What?"

Shay gestures wildly at the training regime. "You did this for all the guards? Like, all of them?!"

"Yeah? I mean there's only seven of them. Was only seven. Not like I was training an army. Anyway, there's no point in new recruits right now anyway, until we start moving to the surface, what with the guard being all disbanded and whatever. The big dweebs still insist on calling me Captain though." Undyne smiles fondly.

Shay shakes her head, bewildered. How was it even possibly to be that dedicated to your job? The irritatingly logical voice in the back of her head, helpfully points out that she's the one who's letting strange monsters she's known for three days train her to use magic, thorugh the power of skateboarding. "You are... unreal, you guys."

"I ASSURE YOU, SHAY, YOU ARE NOT IMAGINING THE GREAT PAPYRUS." Papyrus looks vaguely affronted at the notion, and Shay pats his arm soothingly.

"Of course not. My imagination isn't nearly good enough to come up with someone as cool as you." Papyrus beams, his cheekbones dusting a faint orange, and Shay has just opened her mouth to ask how that works when Undyne breaks in, rolling her eyes.

"SO, if you nerds are ready. Today starts with jogging!"

The next three hours are the most hilariously grueling of Shays life to date. Papyrus and Undyne waste no time, dragging her outside. Papyrus cheerfully bedecks her in sweatbands, head, wrists and ankles, then produces a megaphone from who knows where.

They run alongside her, at least, leading her through what feels like the entirety of Waterfall. It would be slightly more encouraging however, if Undyne didn't run _backwards_ a few feet in front of her, and Papyrus wasn't at her side doing a slow jog, his comically long limbs eating up the turf like he's taking a high speed leisurely stroll, and somehow finding the breath to count off the paces through his megaphone like the worlds most enthusiastic drill sergeant. Shay is not by any means out of shape. Ten years of competitive gymnastics had given her an appreciation for taking care of herself, but her makeshift coaches are on another level entirely.

By the time they've made it through the jogging, the squats, the crunches, the burpees, the push-ups, the rock climbing, and the tai chi, she's about ready to collapse on Undyne's floor and welcome death.

"Alright, that's lunch!" Undyne slaps her companionably on the back, and Shay has to grip the edge of the table to keep from falling over. "Take twenty while I throw something together." Shay sinks gratefully into a chair, limbs feeling like they're filled with lead.

"OOH! I'LL HELP!" The exercise hasn't even slowed Papyrus down, the skeleton remaining just as exuberant as he had been when he'd picked her up that morning. Undyne digs an enormous cooking pot out of a cabinet.

"Good! We'll see if your stirring technique has improved! You were looking a little slow last time."

Cooking with Undyne and Papyrus looks more like a grand melee than two friends making lunch together. It involves spears, and smashing, and the stove cranked up high enough that Shay can feel it from her vantage point halfway across the room. At one point Papyrus grabs a tomato, leaps into the air, inexplicably hovers at the peak point of his arc, and spikes it into the pot. It splatters across most of the room, including Shay. Undyne high-fives him enthusiastically.

"Uh." Shay ventures tentatively. "What exactly are you making?"

"SPAGHETTI!!!"

"My own recipe!"

They look so pleased with themselves Shay doesn't have the heart to voice her concerns. It's really hard to ruin spaghetti after all.

Ten minutes later, Papyrus sets before her a plate of white noodley mush topped with vaguely saucey tomato mush and roundish meat mush.

"VOILA! UNDYNE AND THE GREAT PAPYRUS PRESENT TO YOU: THE WORLDS FINEST SPAGHETTI!"

They both pause expectantly when they sit down, waiting for her to take the first bite. After three hours of a hardcore exercise regimen that would make p90x look like light yoga, Shay is hungry enough to try anything. She takes a bite.

The flavor is indescribable.

Shay feels her face twist up involuntarily around the fork, her eyes beginning to water.

"TEARS OF JOY! I KNEW YOU'D LOVE IT! EVERYONE ALWAYS DOES." Papyrus and Undyne high five again before digging in to their own plates.

"We've been working on this recipe for years. We've taste tested it on just about everybody in the underground by now."

Shay spares a moment of prayer for the people of the underground, before forcing her gag reflex to bend to her will and swallow the mouthful of pasta.

"It's um. I've never had anything like it." She says delicately. Undyne slurps up one of the more intact noodles and grins at her.

"Don't worry, cookings on the list for tomorrow, we'll teach you. Then you can have it all the time!"

Papyrus pushes away his empty plate and pats his unarmored spine in satisfaction. Shay is too busy trying to summon the will for a second bite to even bother with the question of where his food had gone.

"I WAS A TERRIBLE COOK UNTIL I STARTED TAKING LESSONS FROM UNDYNE! JUST LISTEN TO HER AND YOU'LL BE A PRO IN NO TIME." Papyrus stands and takes his and Undyne's plates to the sink, returning with three gigantic glasses of water.

"DRINK UP. UNDYNE SAYS THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROPER HYDRATION." He says, setting Shay's before her with a flourish.

"You've learned so well Paps." Undyne says fondly, before drinking down half her glass in one gulp. Shay gratefully turns her attention to the water, a second bite of spaghetti seeming completely outside her physical capabilities, and guzzles it down.

"'Atta girl! Alright, everybody ready for phase two?" Undyne claps her hands together authoritatively. "We don't have much time to get the second half done."

Shay bites back a whimper. "What's the rush? Breaks are important for humans! Very very important!"

Undyne is already pushing the chairs in and carrying the glasses to the sink. Papyrus hands Shay up out of her chair, uneaten plate of spaghetti abandoned.

"I know, I wish I didn't have to rush your first day. But Paps and I are having dinner at the palace tonight with Asgore and Frisk and Queen Toriel." Shay trudges after Papyrus and Undyne on the way out the door.

"Wait, seriously? The palace?" Shay musters up enough energy to be suitably impressed, grasping for the first time exactly how important Undyne is as Captain of the Guard. "With the royal family?"

"Yeah, 'course. I haven't seen Asgore and Frisk in a week actually, normally we get together more often, but we've all been really busy this last month, with Alphys and Sans doing the elevators, and Asgore meeting with the human government and Toriel doing the plans for Mt. Ebbot City. They're gonna start construction as soon as the elevators are done in a few days, so it's crunch time." Undyne explains. "We've gotta head out around three or so. Anyway, come on, we've just got the sparring left, and then we'll end with some basketball."

"YOU'LL LIKE THE BASKETBALL. ALPHYS TAUGHT IT TO US FROM ONE OF THE HUMAN HISTORIES. I CAN'T DO THE DISAPPEARING TRICK THE BLUE HUMAN CAN YET, BUT YOU CAN PRACTICE WITH ME."

Shay sighs and submits to her fate, letting Papyrus usher her out of the house.

 

 

After two more hours of mental and physical exhaustion that put grad school finals to shame, Shay is finally turned loose to pursue her own devices. Papyrus lifts her off her feet in a bone-crushing goodbye hug, and Undyne claps her on the back in the way out, forcing her to catch herself on the doorframe.

"I'll see you tomorrow, bright and early, you got it?" She calls out as Shay rounds the corner. Shay waves back before ducking out of sight. Every muscle in her body is screaming invective at her, and all she wants to do is collapse in the breakfast nook at the inn and let Bunnebelle ply her with food. Food that is not spaghetti.

She hastens home, as quickly as her flighty attention span will let her when there are whispering flowers at her feet and crystalline constellations above her head. She trails her hand along the dripping walls now and then, collecting water to smooth across her still overheated skin, before rounding the bend to Snowdin and being smacked in the face with a wall of cold air and regret. She squawks and fumbles for her phone, jamming on her jacket as fast as she can and forcing her protesting legs into a brisk jog back to the Inn.

"Bunnebelle?" She calls pitifully. The door swings shut behind her with a quiet jingle as she shivers her way into the lobby. There is no answer. Her eye falls on a sheet of stationary taped to the top of the doorway leading to the stairs, pale pink and patterned with ribbons.

 

_Shay,_

_Pippin and I have gone shopping in the Capitol._

_We should be back by dinner time. Call me if you need anything!_

_-Bunnebelle_  

 

Shay whimpers pathetically, unsticking the note from the doorframe and copying the number into her phone to distract herself as she drags herself up the stairs. Bunnebelle is gone. There is no food here. Her stomach growls painfully, and she thinks longingly of all the bacon she had left uneaten at breakfast. She peels herself out of her exercise clothing and paws through her laundry pile until she finds her fuzzy leggings, then risks a glance at her bed. She totally can't pester Bunnebelle just for food, and she hasn't asked permission to root through the fridge for snacks yet.... But dinner isn't for hours and she really doesn't feel like having sleep for lunch.

She shoves her feet back into her boots with a sigh and shuffles out the door.

 

 

The Dogs greet her loudly, beckoning her over to the poker table with toothy smiles, but she just waves them off tiredly. The bar is empty except for The Dogs, and Grillby at the counter, and mercifully quiet after a morning spent three feet from Papyrus's megaphone. Had it been motivational? Yes. Good for her eardrums? Not so much.

Doggo squints as her as she passes, making a beeline for Grillby at the bar, her lifeline to edible food. "What's wrong kid? You smell exhausted." Lesser Dog cocks his head at her with such concern that his neck bends into a u-shape. He gives an upside down bark of agreement.

"I was ah, 'training'. With Undyne and Papyrus. And I really, really need food. They made this spaghetti for lunch? And-"

The Dogs all wince sympathetically. Grillby makes an odd _snap-crack_ noise, the flames at the top of his head flickering white for a moment, and turns to duck back into the kitchen.

"Congratulations, Shay." Dogaressa snickers, "You've officially been inducted into the Underground."

"If you can survive that, you can survive anything else the Underground throws at you!" Doggo cackles, raising his glass at Shay in a toast.

Shay salutes him back, lazily. "Oh good, at least the worst is over. Though I have to admit, the worst was actually pretty damned bad. Like, 'might have broken the Geneva conventions' bad." She looks back over her shoulder at the sound of the kitchen door swinging back open, turning around in time for Grillby to set a plate in front of her. It's a BLT, heavy on the everything, with perfectly toasted bread. She actually tears up a little looking at it.

"Bless you sir." She manages to rip her gaze away from the beautiful sandwich long enough to thank Grillby, before tearing into it like a starving wolf.

"Oi, Grillby! I didn't get a fancy sandwich when I had lunch with Undyne!" Doggo complains. Grillby just shrugs, setting a not-rum-not-coke down in front of Shay and leaning against the counter a few feet away, well out of the blast zone of any spraying crumbs.

Doggo scowls. "Favoritism. Blatant favoritism." Dogamy reaches across the table to flick one of the dog treats scattered in front of Doggo, sending it, and several chips, sliding off the table and into Doggo's lap.

"Maybe she's the favorite because she has yet to leave ash all over Grillby's clean floors, eh cousin?"

Doggo pitches one of the treats at Dogamy, missing spectacularly, and the treat sails through the air and right into Greater Dogs waiting mouth, who crunches down on it loudly with a look of insufferable smugness. Doggo throws a paw in the air, looking disgusted, and gestures for Dogaressa to deal the next hand. Dogaressa rolls her eyes.

"You want in on this, Shay?" She calls, bridging the cards with an unnecessary amount of showmanship. Shay swallows a bite of sandwich with an audible gulp, and swipes the back of her hand across her mouth to chase away the stray crumbs.

"Nah, I'm good. I already feel slightly less dead. I should try and actually get some work done, now that I'm not on the brink of starvation." The Dogs shrug and turn back to their game, quickly becoming absorbed in a debate over whether Doggo is cheating worse than usual today, or just within his normal capacity.

Shay finishes off her sandwich, pausing briefly to mourn the emptiness of her plate before scooting off her stool.

She pauses after she stands, glancing at the door. She really doesn't feel like going home, she realizes unhappily. Not only is there a lingering possibility of her falling asleep on her notes if she does, but... Bunnebelle and Pippin are gone, and the Inn is painfully quiet. She'd shared an apartment with three other people on the surface, with someone always coming or going or cooking or talking or arguing over the television, and the notion of a silent workspace feels a bit eerie. She purses her lips a moment, hesitating. It's no quaint coffee shop or schmaltzy bakery, but Grillby’s has roomy booths, and endlessly bickering dogs, and a reasonably close approximation of her favorite drink. She misses the odd look Grillby throws her as she nods to herself a bit, before turning and staking a claim on the booth closest to the bar, dropping down onto the worn leather with a _whumph_ and leaning to the side to dig her phone out of her pocket.

Notecards, colored pens, highlighters, and a hefty stack of books form a pile on the table as she mashes buttons, still a bit over enthused with her swanky new phone. Her pens are her pride and joy, the glittery gel kind, the cheap ones with the sparkles that rub off the paper when you run your hand over it, specially bought to annoy the cranky old world history professor who insisted on ten page handwritten essays with every exam. She's got dozens of them in an eye searing multitude of colors, and takes immense satisfaction in the fact that she's never used the same color on two pages of that professors assignments. She's lining them up at her elbow in rainbow order when the table in front of her brightens, firelight bouncing off the cheap plastic casings of her pens. She glances up.

"Oh, hey. You don't mind me working here do you? I promise not to get sharpie on the table."

Grillby waves her off, looking a bit chagrined at being caught watching her. He gestures at the stack of books in front of her. "What are those?"

Her face warms a bit as she realizes the top one is the children's book. The top three are actually, now she looks. Erin was a bit of a condescending jerk in hindsight.

"Oh. These are- I mentioned the magic studying thing? These are the things I'm using. To study." She sighs, brandishing a slightly sticky copy of _What Makes You Special?_ at him. "It's all very hilarious. I promise there's actually some serious things in here too. Or at least there better be, or I'm dragging all this back to the Librarby and pitching it in that librarians smug face."

Grillby crackles a bit before turning back to work, shaking his head. Shay smiles a bit at the sound. It's nice, she thinks, leaning her chin on her hand and watching him out of the corner of her eye. Normal laughter would be too loud for him, somehow. At the front, Doggo slams a paw down on the table, howling something about too many aces as Dogaressa rakes the pot out of the center, right out from under his nose.

"Not my fault if you can't tell an ace from a joker, sweetheart." Her smile is all pointy white fangs, flashing dangerously before she leans over to swipe her tongue across Doggo's cheek. He sputters and scrubs his paw across his face in annoyance, still griping about his loss. Shay shakes her head and turns back to her work with a smile. It's toying with her mind, these tiny reminders that the people she's surrounded by just aren't human.

An hour later, she's made a respectable amount of progress, if progress can be measured by the length of the list of words she's going to have to go ask Erin the meaning of. She'd started off with an actual history book, which had quickly turned out to be a mistake. Every single King the underground had ever had seemed to be named Asgore, with no 'Juniors' or 'the thirds' included to make it easier to tell them apart. All of the place names were easy enough to follow, she supposes, but frequent mentions of 'home' and 'new home' confused her so badly she had turned to a book of fun facts obviously meant for pre-teens, but that one started talking about the different varieties of monster, and she had no idea what the difference between a kelpie and a selkie was, much less the strange ones like Temmies and Whimsums.

She has an entire notebook page filled with more things she was going to have to check out, including a map, a monster dictionary, and some sort of book of monster types. She rubs her temples tiredly. The bar is beginning to fill up, the Dogs chatter gradually being swallowed in the gentle murmur of the monsters that trickle in for dinner. Her hair has slid forward over her face after being hunched over for so long, and she impatiently shoves a stray lock out of her eyes before giving up and tucking the whole mess behind her ears. Grillby pauses at her booth as he goes by, pointing at her empty drink.

"No, thank you." Shay sighs. "I think I'm gonna call it. I can't get much more done tonight unfortunately, until I know what a-" She brushes aside one of the notecards on top of her notebook, absently shaking it off when the gel ink sticks to the side of her hand. "Mass to Magic ratio is...? Wait where did I read that?" She shuffles through her pile of notecards aimlessly. She has a sneaking suspicious that few of these words are actually related in any meaningful way. Dust, Syrens, Determination, water sausages...

Grillby _pops_ quietly, bringing her back to reality, politely pretending not to notice when she jumps a little. She clears her throat. "Yes! Well. Anyway. I've got a massive laundry list of things I know nothing about, and a children's book has made me feel like a, well, a child again, so if I could have the bill please, that would be stellar." She sits up properly for the first time in two hours, wincing as her back makes an audible cracking noise. Grillby tilts his head, studying the mess in front of her.

"May I?" Shay shrugs, already lifting books out of the way here and there in a quest to find the cell phone she'd buried somewhere in the avalanche.

"Knock yourself out."

He tugs her notebook out from under the detritus, careful not to upset any of her cards onto the floor, and glances over his shoulder to check no one needs anything before pushing his glasses up and studying the page. Shay finishes her rummaging, finally coming up with her cell phone, which had been knocked off the table and onto the seat beside her at some point. She rolls her eyes at herself before scrolling through the menu and materializing her wallet. Grillby is still reading through her notes. She raises her eyebrows at him. Slowly, he bends to pick up a pen, and gestures to the page with it.

"Do you mind?"

She chuckles. "Go for it I guess. Did I spell something wrong?" He shakes his head and sets the notebook down on the table. Line by line, he writes something next to most of the words in neat, fuschia block letters. She hides a smile at his choice of color. He reaches the bottom of the page quickly, only writing a line or so by each of her words. He pauses, looking it over, before nodding approvingly and sliding it back over to her.

"The rest require... Longer explanations." She reads a random line, quickly.

_Selkie - Water sprite. Resembles a seal._

"Oh! Oh, wow, thank you so much!" She smiles at him, delighted. "I can actually get something done this evening now! You're a lifesaver, seriously."

"Not at all." Grillby bends to collect her empty glass. "I've started a tab for you."

Shay blinks. "Wait, what? I've only been here for a few days, you didn't need to.. I can just pay, it's no trouble."

"You did say you planned on coming in often."

She just catches another one of those there-and-gone expressions, the briefest of smiles, stopping her protests in their tracks. "I... Suppose I did, didn't? I guess I'll see you tomorrow."


	7. The One With An Amazing Pun Chain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright guys. So, um. I'm sorry? But writing this story out in standard fanfiction format just wasn't working for me.  
> So I took a break, mapped everything out, and wrote a whole bunch of scenes out ahead of time. It took AGES. But: most of the major scenes are done now, (yes, even THOSE) and things should actually be pretty smooth sailing from here on out. And things should go up quicker since the hard parts are already out of the way, and I know exactly what I'm working towards instead of having to figure it out as I go. Maybe I'll even do something crazy like a regular schedule? Here's hoping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO: I admit defeat. Who wants to beta? There's only so much my poor friends can do, and they're, y'know, my friends. They're not mean enough to mean when I need it. So anyone who wants to take a crack at sifting through 50,000 words of disjointed rambling and trying to pull it together with me, drop me a line.

It's amazing, Shay thinks as she swaddles her head in her pillows to block out the sounds of her over enthusiastic coach shouting her name outside her window, how quickly the weirdest and most wonderful things can become mundane. 

This morning marks the end of her first week in the underground, and the myriad aches and pains throughout her body mark the fourth day of her training with Undyne and Papyrus. She briefly entertains a quandary about whether or not ducking training is the same as skipping out on class, before discarding the notion. Papyrus had just looked so _disappointed_ the one and only time she'd suggested cutting back.

So already, Shay has begun to build her routine around Papyrus and Undyne. Training in the morning, lunch with Pippin and Bunnebelle while her muscles try to recover, then library in the afternoon, and studying or Pawtucket with the Dogs in the evenings. 

"Shay!"

"Shaaaaaay!!!"

Shaaaaaaaaaaay!!!"

"Yo, NERD. Wake UP!" There is a wet _thwack_ as a snowball splatters against her window. "Don't make me come up there!"

Shay groans and rolls out of bed. 

Undyne tumbles in the second she opens the door, practically vibrating with excitement. With each day that she spends with her, Shay is finding it harder and harder to believe that this is actually the Captain of the Guard. She scrubs at her eyes, yawning.

"Where's Papyrus?" Undyne claps her on the shoulder. 

"He's gonna spend the day with his bro, since Sans is finally off the hook for the elevators. They finished ‘em last night! And there's no time for being tired! I've got something extra special for you today!" Shay's joints give a phantom twinge in protest. "With the elevators done Alph's finally got some free time to meetcha!" Undyne crows. "You're gonna love her, she's the smartest person around. She'll know what to do to get your magic mojo up to scratch."

Shay perks up at that. Undyne has spoken about Alphys every day since they started training, and meeting the brilliant scientist capable of inspiring so much awe in a tough, terrifying woman like Undyne? Shay feels like she's about to meet a celebrity. She supposes in the Underground Alphys _is_ something like a celebrity, being the Royal Scientist and all.

She's excited enough she barely notices the long jog from Snowdin to Hotland. (To replace today's training, Undyne insists.) The science lab is just inside the entrance, on the outskirts of the main city. It's a massive block of metal and rivets, two stories tall, with poorly hidden cameras all over the outside. Shay blinks up at one as it swivels to focus on her, then waves sheepishly. Undyne seizes her by the wrist and drags her over to the door. She hammers on the door hard enough to send the echoes bouncing back at them from the caverns ceiling, a hundred feet above, then stands bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"BABE! Babe open up! She's here!" 

"Oh-oh no! I'm coming! I-" There's a muffled crash from inside the building, and a shriek. A pitter-patter of rushing footsteps, and the door slides open. Shay stares. Dr. Alphys stands in the doorway, beet red, twisting her claws together. "I-I-I- um. Welcome, Shay?" She squeaks.

Shay covers her mouth with a hand. She had been prepared for some kind of tall, imposing mad scientist type, with laser guns and the sort of loud flashy cool stuff Undyne seems to love dangling from her belt. Alphys is a short, round, butter-yellow dinosaur, wearing lab coat over a T-shirt with the words Cutie-π written across the chest. There's a bow on her head frill. A pink bow. 

She's... utterly adorable. 

She grows even redder as Shay looks at her. "O-oh- come in! Oh I'm so rude, please come in, I'll- I'll make you some tea? Oh no I-I'm out of tea. C-coffee then? I only have the i-i-instant stuff but- please come sit down, I'll g-get, um, cups? Yes, cups!" 

Shay manages to find her voice just as Alphys turns and rushes back into the lab.

"You don't have to- oh no."

Undyne cackles and shoves Shay into the lab. "Just let the nerd fuss, it'll make her feel better."

"You could've warned me, Undyne. I was not prepared for Alphys to be like... this." Shay snorts, then freezes as Undyne’s hand clamps down on her shoulder, _hard_. 

"Be like _what_?" Shay turns around slowly confused, then realizes what that sounded like.

"Like- Oh!" She snickers and ducks her head, lowers her voices to a whisper. "Undyne, she's _adorable_! I was unprepared." 

Undyne blinks, then throws back her head and laughs. "Right?! Nobody's cuter than my Alphys. But don't go getting any ideas now, punk. I got dibs." 

They're still laughing when Alphys bustles back over to them, arms stacked high with coffee mugs, a jar of instant coffee, a kettle, and three incredibly easy to draw cubes. 

"H-here. Um, Undyne could you, um- oh, thank you."

Undyne has already taken everything out of Alphys arms, leaving Alphys free to bustle about, setting the cubes on the ground and tapping the tops. Shay’s eyes go round as they unfold into two squashy looking couches and a small coffee table, which Undyne sets the coffee supplies down on. 

"Um, p-please sit down Shay. Ah, if you want to I mean? You can stand if you'd like, I-I don't want to force you to-" 

Shay flings herself down onto one of the couches. 

"These are so cool! How did you make them fold up like that? Did you invent them? Does it work like the cell phones? There's no way all this fit into that box! Is it magic? Is this a magic couch?!"

Alphys flushes red again. "I-I-It's a- s-smaller version of the, um, po-pocket dimension tech, yes. The p-previous Royal Scientist invented it, bu-but I've um, expanded it? Most of the furniture in here f-folds up like that. I'm working on scaling it up i-into buildings? For when we start building on the surface. Wh-which will be soon now that the tunnels and elevators are done." Her stutter evens out as she talks about her work, and she manages to calm enough to sit down on the couch opposite Shay and pour them each a cup of coffee.

Undyne gives Shay a thumbs up over Alphys shoulder before swinging herself over the back of the couch and dropping down next to Alphys. 

"We don't have anything like this on the surface." Shay gushes, leaning over the table. "That phone you made for me blew my mind- Oh! I need to thank you for the phone! It's fantastic! I put all my stuff in it!" 

Alphys blush is lighter this time. "I-I'm glad you like it. I'm sorry Undyne broke yours in the first place." She prods Undyne in the side with a claw, then squeals as Undyne engulfs her in a one-armed hug that nearly drapes her over her lap. "U-Undyne!"

"Aw come on, Boo. It all worked out! She doesn't have to use that super lame human phone now!" 

"Th-that doesn't mean i-it was okay to break her things!"

"But it was an accident anyway, and it's not like she's mad"

"But y-you should still apologize!" 

Shay presses her lips together to hide her smirk and leans back into the cushions with her coffee cup, watching them squabble. She can kind of see how they work together, despite being total opposites. Undyne wins eventually, dragging Alphys bodily into her lap and flustering her so badly that she can't protest anymore through her stutters. 

"Anyway," Undyne says, wrapping her arms around Alphys middle and holding her like a teddy bear, ignoring the embarrassed little squeak she gives, "The whole reason I dragged this nerd to meet you was so you two could figure out what's up with the whole magic dealy."

"O-Oh right!" Alphys sits up a bit. She's not making much of an effort to escape Undyne's grasp anymore, Shay notes with amusement. "I haven't had much time to look i-in to it unfortunately, I'm sorry! Undyne told me what you're trying to d-do? But I-I just don't know anything about human magic."

Shay blows out a breath, ruffling her bangs. "Yeah, I figured. But Undyne says you're the best at pretty much everything." Alphys turns pink again at the praise, and Shay grins. "So any ideas you've got would still help, I'm sure."

"W-well, I haven't been part of the peace talks o-of course, so the only other human I've met is Frisk. It would just be guessing. B-but I-I'll see what I can do?" Alphys shrugs helplessly. Undyne gives her a squeeze. 

"Don't worry, Papyrus and I'll keep bringing her up to par in the meantime."

"Oh please," Shay snorts. "It's not like I was too badly off before."

"Pfft, _Frisk_ could kick your butt, and they're just a kid. They even beat me once!" Undyne cackles. "We should have them spar with you, teach you a thing or two!"

Shay flicks a drop of coffee at her, careful to miss Alphys. "Oh, hah hah. Very funny. I'll have you know I went to college on a gymnastics scholarship. If you're expecting any other average human walking in here to be able to keep up with you you're gonna be disappointed. I sure hope you haven't put the kid through one of your workouts."

Undyne and Alphys both pause, exchanging a glance. "I'm all for confidence girl, but you'd never even catch Frisk. _I_ can barely snag the little monkey half the time."

The air of levity shifts into something a touch more awkward while Shay wonders just how offended she needs to be. "Frisk is like, ten, Undyne."

"Well yeah. But everyone knows humans are supposed to be stronger than monsters. That's how you guys beat us in the first place." 

Shay blinks, slowly. "Undyne. You could kick my ass from here to tomorrow. You're telling me a kid beat you?" 

“Well, less that the little punk beat me and more that I couldn't land a single hit on ‘em. You should see the kid move.” They stare at each other for a moment.

Across the room a door slides open. 

They all startle, turning to face the monster who's just walked in. 

"Oh! S-sans!" Alphys calls. "What are you doing here?" 

The skeleton, Sans, raises a hand in a lazy wave. "hey alph. forgot some stuff down in the workshop. you know how paps is about taking care of that tool set he got me. who's the newbie?" The little pinpricks of light in his eye sockets flick towards you.

Shay waves back. "I'm Shay. You're Papyrus's brother right? Sans?"

“that's me." He shuffles over to lean over the back of the couch. "thanks for keeping him company this week. he gets pretty _bonely_ when I'm not around to entertain him." 

Undyne sighs, clapping a hand over her eyes. Shay blinks at Sans, confused. 

"I don't-" Sans grins at her, obviously waiting. "Oh- _oh,_ was that a pun? Oh I get it. Bone puns."

Sans grins wider. "what's the matter kid, don't find my jokes _humerus_?"

Shay groans, rubbing her temple. "Oh god, you've got a million more don't you?"

"He really, really does." Undyne drags a hand down her face. "And only Frisk and Toriel enjoy them."

"aw, undyne, don't _tibia_ that way."

"Alright that one was a stretch, come on." 

"You love it, don't _fibula_."

"S-sans!" 

"alphys, you too? It's not like you to be so _sternum_."

Shay covers her face with her hands and sinks into the couch, groaning. "Oh my god. Stop, no. Mercy."

"why, are my puns making you feel _ilium_?"

Undyne makes a grab at him over the back of the couch, growling in frustration when he neatly sidesteps her, still grinning. 

"A-a-anyway!" Alphys cuts them off. "Sans, w-we were just talking about Shay’s studies."

"Pfft, no. We were talking about how Frisk could whoop her butt!"

"There is no way!"

"Back me up, Sans. Frisk could totally take her!"

Sans shrugs. "it's true, frisk's pretty tough when they wanna be. puts the rest of the humans who've shown up to shame. challenged the mayor's personal guard to tag a couple months ago. tori had to come lure them back inside with cookies before they ruined morale too badly."

Shay stares at him. "That is... Not normal. At all." She thinks back to every time she's seen ambassador Frisk on television. They'd looked like a normal kid. Short, cute, always wore stripes. But then, they _were_ the kid who brought down the barrier. Shay's train of thought freezes at a sudden realization.

Frisk, a ten year old. Brought down a magical barrier that had kept monsters imprisoned underground since the dark ages. 

"Ah. So, Frisk is, really, really fast. Much faster than normal humans. Inhumanly fast."

Undyne and Alphys look at her, confused.

"Magically fast, some might say."

Their eyes go wide.

"that'd explain a lot." Sans chuckles.

"That little punk's been holding out on us!" Undyne growls, standing up and clearly forgetting that Alphys is on her lap. "We could've been doing so much cool magic training this whole time!" The little dinosaur rolls away and bounces onto the other end of the couch, holding up a placating claw.

"N-now, we're not sure that it _i-is_ magic, Undyne. L-lets not be hasty."

But Undyne is already whipping out her phone and smashing keys. She hits the speaker phone hard enough to make the button squeak in protest, then stands tapping her foot as the dial tone fills the room. Only Shay notices when Sans quietly backs away and sidles into an elevator across the room. 

The line connects with a click, and she turns her attention back to Undyne.

"Yo, _dweeb!_ " She shouts, far too close to the mouth piece. "You've got some splainin' to do."

"U-Undyne!" Alphys gasps. "Oh no, Frisk, what she means is, um, we were talking to Shay? And um, o-oh no you haven't met her yet h-have you? She's one of the human transfer students? U-um, anyway, she said-"

"She said that that little dodging trick of yours is totally not a human thing!"

They both pause and cock their heads at the phone, which remains completely silent. Shay furrows her brow, confused. 

"You thought it wasn't _important_? You've got awesome anime super powers and you thought it wasn't important?! _Super powers are always important_! What if you've got some kind of crazy destined quest you gotta go on!? You can't ignore destiny, Frisk, didn't you learn anything from watching Super Battle Warriors XZ 3000?!"

The phone continues to be silent. Undyne deflates a bit. 

"Oh. Yeah Ok maybe bringing down the barrier counts. But what about the sequel?!"

Shay looks at Alphys. "Is... she talking to herself?"

Alphys looks confused for a moment before realizing what she means. "Oh no, Frisk i-is mute."

Shay stares at her. "That... actually makes this more confusing."

"I-I guess humans can't hear them the way we can? It's the oddest- o-o-oh no! I suppose that's magic too, isn't it? How did I-I not notice that?" Alphys puts her head in her claws, looking mortified. 

A voice crackles from Undyne’s phone, making both of them jump. 

"My child? Who are you talking to? Oh I see! Hello Undyne!" The voice is warm and motherly, but strong enough to carry clearly from what sounds quite far away. 

"Tori! Hey! Did you know Frisk has some sort of crazy human magic going on?!" Undyne flops back onto the couch, setting the phone on the table so that everyone can hear. A dull thump sounds over the line. Undyne raises an eyebrow. "Tori?"

"Oh goodness, what on earth gave you that idea, child?"

"Um." Shay finally decides to speak up, scooting closer to the edge of the couch so that she can lean over the phone. "That would be me. Hello?" The phone is silent for a moment. 

"My child, might I borrow your phone for a moment?" There is a rustling noise as the phone is handed over, and a quiet beep that must be the speakerphone being shut off.

"And who might you be?"

Shay clears her throat uncomfortably. The warm, jovial tone in the voice is gone, replaced with something like... Caution? She decides using her politest, 'talking to a professor voice' is the way to go. "I'm Shay, ma'am. I'm one of the exchange students that were allowed down last week? Undyne and Alphys have been helping me study magic, and... They mentioned a few things that Frisk can do that don't seem... Quite, um. Normal?"

There is another long pause. "I see." 

Alphys and Undyne look at each other, then at Shay, concerned. 

"It's not a big deal, right Tori?" Undyne sounds quieter than Shay has ever heard her. "We thought it was cool."

"O-obviously we weren't s-s-sure." Alphys chimes in timidly. "That's w-why w-we called?"

"I think I would very much like to meet you, Ms. Shay." Tori says finally. Her tone brooks no argument. "Why don't you join me for tea this afternoon? How does two o'clock sound."

"I mean. Um. Alright?" It's not really a question anyway, Shay muses. "Where should I-"

"Alphys and Undyne can bring you, not to worry. You're both invited as well, of course. I'm sure Frisk will be delighted to see you, Alphys."

"O-oh thank you. O-of course we'll come."

"Wonderful. I'll see you in a few hours then." The line disconnects with another quiet click, leaving them all blinking down at the phone in total bewilderment. 

Undyne is the first to speak.

"Well that was super weird." She reaches down and shuts her phone with a _snap_ , 

"Y-yeah." Alphys agrees, still staring down at the table where the phone had rested. "I wonder why- _oh no_."

"What?" 

"What?"

Shay and Undyne chime in unison.

"I don't know if I have any clothes nice enough for the palace clean!" Alphys flings herself off the sofa and dashes for an escalator on the other side of the room, nearly upsetting one of the coffee mugs when she bumps the table. Shay chokes.

"The- did she say the palace?"

Undyne turns back to look at her. "Well obviously. Where else would Toriel have tea?"

"That was Queen Toriel?!" 

"Oh, whoops. Guess she didn't really introduce herself huh?"

Shays only answer is a strangled sort of wheeze. She's not sure she has any nice enough clothes clean either.


	8. The One Where We're All a Bit Jealous of Frisk's Fashion Sense

The Capitol is very different from what Shay has come to expect of the monsters. The buildings are crammed close together, and while the architecture is as varied and fanciful as anything in Hotland they are all made from the same grey stone brick. She glances up at the cavern ceiling as they walk. It's too even, like it's been carved, and the rock is the same color as all the buildings. They must have carved out the entire cavern, she realizes, and built the city from the stone as it was dug up.

The roof is lower than Snowdin’s, but less claustrophobic than Waterfall’s narrow tunnel system. The buildings themselves are unfortunately drab, but the monsters living in them have decorated them as best they can. Cheerfully patterned curtains, bright awnings, and pots bursting with flowers vie for attention in front of every house. A few monsters wave to Shay as she passes, and several more call out greetings to Alphys and Undyne.

Despite the friendly atmosphere and the new sights, the closer they draw to the palace the more a knot grows in the pit of Shay's stomach. It occurs to her that despite all she's seen and done since arriving, she's had very little time or energy to properly marvel at all the marvels the Underground has to offer. The monsters that hail them as they pass are some of the strangest she's seen yet. The people of the Capitol are those that don't fit well in any of the other, hyperspecialized regions in the surrounding areas, those who can't live in the Snowdin's cold or Waterfall's constant damp, and the result is a colorful mishmash of all manner of shapes and faces packed into this relatively small area carved out for them. She should be ogling everything, asking a million questions, but instead...

She can't stop thinking about the sudden chill in the queen's tone after Shay had introduced herself, and the abrupt invitation they'd received. She can't think of many(any) positive explanations. Undyne side-eyes her as they pass onto the palace grounds, and the shops and apartments give way to elegant topiaries.

"What's the matter, dork? Afraid the Queen’s gonna eat 'cha?" She throws an arm over Shay's shoulder, making her stumble.

"Hardly." Shay jokes. "I'd taste terrible. Humans are all gristle."

"What? No!" Undyne hauls them to a stop and wrestles her into a headlock. She drives a fist into the top of Shay's head and noogies her viciously. "What kind of attitude is that?! If Tori decides to pop you in a pie than you had better be the best pie you can be! Put all the other pies to shame!! DAZZLE them with your meaty goodness!!!"

"B-but she won't eat you o-of course!" Alphys scurries around Undyne's back so that Shay can peer up at her from behind her ruined bangs.

"Well she sounded pretty- Oi!" Undyne's arm tightens around Shay's neck, and she has to stop talking to scuffle with her. She manages to wriggle away with one of the tricks that Papyrus had shown her during sparring practice, slipping out of the captains grasp and landing on the brick pathway with an _oomph_.

"YEAH!" Undyne crows, reaching down for a fistbump. " _That's_ how you do it!"

Shay rolls her eyes, but obligingly holds out a fist as she turns back to Alphys. "The Queen didn't sound very happy on the phone. Do you think she knew about Frisk?"

"Well, I-I don't know. W-we're not even certain it is magic." Alphys shrugs apologetically, wringing her claws.

"Eh, I bet it isn't. I bet it's just a side effect of hanging out with super awesome badasses like Paps and I all the time." Shay takes the hand up Undyne offers, over balancing a bit as she's yanked to her feet too quickly.

"I mean look at this dweeb!" Shay recovers just in time to sidestep the elbow that Undyne tries to dig into her ribs. "She was a total wuss before I got to her!"

"I was not- I've only been here a week!"

"I know, right? I do AMAZING work."

"Oh, so I don't get any of the credit?"

Their friendly bickering carries them the rest of the way up the walk to the palace doors.

Undyne raps the lacquer, and barely a moment passes before one of the great doors is flung open, and a blur of green and pink streaks out of it. It barrels into Undyne, connecting with a solid sounding _whumph_.

"Frisk!" She crows, sweeping it up and tossing it into the air like a toddler, and Shay realizes that it’s Ambassador Frisk, shrieking with laughter as Undyne catches them and sets them down. They're dressed in sparkly green leggings, a pale pink scarf, and an oversized green hoodie with eyes and a mouth sewn onto the hood to make it look like a Froggit. Their eyes sparkle as they shove the hood back from where it's drooped over their eyes, and their hands practically blur as they sign at Undyne and Alphys, then stand on their tiptoes to peer around them at you.

Their head cocks, and they turn back to Undyne, tossing off a few more signs.

"Yep, this is my newest recruit! I know, sorry Paps couldn't come, it was kind of short notice, but say hi to Shay! She's almost as cool, promise!" Shay yelps as Undyne reaches back and hauls her to stand in front of Frisk. Frisk grins at her, and starts in on another volley of signs.

"Oh, woah, hang on squirt," Shay holds her hands up apologetically. "I don't know sign language."

Frisk looks momentarily disappointed, but turns to Alphys and makes a few distinctly reproachful gestures.

"W-what? Oh! Oh, Shay, they say it's nice to meet you, and Papyrus says you're super cool, and i-is your hair really that color, and did U-Undyne really drop a Christmas tree on you, and, and- s-slow down, Frisk, I-I can't keep up!"

But Shay is laughing, crouching down slightly so she can look Frisk in the eye. "Likewise kiddo. I'll have you know I am indeed super cool, _and_ a natural redhead, and Undyne totally suplexed a tree right on top of me. It was awesome."

Frisk beams at her, then grabs her by the hand and tugs her through the door and into the foyer, still trying to sign with one hand. Shay shakes her head, bemused. "Seriously, you live in the Underground with all kinds of crazy monster folk, and red hair is what throws you?"

Frisk shrugs, making their Froggit hood wobble adorably, and signs briefly.

"Oi!" A consternated Undyne swoops in and tosses Frisk over her shoulder, dangling them by their ankles until they shriek with excitement. "Who are you calling boring?! We are the coolest, awesomest people on the planet! And my hair is WAY redder than hers!"

Someone politely clears their throat, and everyone pauses to look. The entryway opens into a large foyer, with hallways branching off and a grand staircase in the center. At the top stands an enormous, regal woman who Shay recognizes from every press conference and interview that's been worth watching in the last year.

"Queen Toriel."

The Queen smiles, making her way down the stairs. "Alphys, Undyne, it's wonderful to see you again." Her smile chills nearly imperceptibly as her eyes come to rest on Shay. "And Shay! Welcome, child. I'm glad you could join me on such short notice."

Shay straightens up, tugging at the hem of her shirt. Is she supposed to curtsy? Bow? Shake hands? She settles on a sheepish, one shouldered shrug and internally cringes at her own awkwardness. "Um. Of course, no problem? Undyne's told me all about you. It's nice to meet you."

"I've set everything out, please, join me."

Toriel leads everyone through the halls towards the rear of the palace, where the fancy wallpaper and elegantly framed paintings give way to plush rugs and potted plants. Shay can only assume that this is the personal wing, for the King’s family. Toriel opens a door at the end of a long hallway and ushers them through into a warm, brightly lit kitchen. A fire crackles in the hearth, and a table is set up in the center with a steaming teapot and enough cups for all of them.

As they all move to take their seats however, she pauses.

"Frisk, my dear, didn't you want to show Undyne and Alphys the toy airplane Asgore brought you from the surface?"

Shay's heart plummets down into her stomach.

Frisk bounces up and down excitedly, signing urgently before squeezing in between Undyne and Alphys and seizing each of them by a hand. Then they pause, looking at Shay and cocking their head.

"O-oh." Alphys’s tone is concerned, and she looks nervously back and forth between Shay and Toriel. "Wouldn't Shay like to um, come with us?"

Undyne's eye narrows shrewdly. "We can wait until after tea, kiddo. Wouldn't want the new kid to feel left out, yeah?"

"Nonsense," Toriel interjects smoothly. "She'll stay with me! It will give us a chance to get to know each other."

Frisk doesn't move. They frown at their mother, tugging their hands out of Undyne’s and Alphys's so they can say something.

"My child, why on earth would you say that? You were so excited to show off your new toy. Shay and I will have a nice chat while you play." Toriel nudges the three of them out the door. "Go on now, I insist."

Alphys sends Shay one last sympathetic look before the door shuts behind them.

Toriel turns back to Shay, clapping her hands together briskly. "Now then! Why don't you sit, dear?"

Obediently, Shay sits. Toriel's warm, motherly persona and good cheer have evaporated, leaving behind an intimidating sternness that sets Shay on edge and makes her traitorous heart begin a nervous staccato behind her ribcage. Toriel pours her a cup of tea and sets a plate of biscuits on the table between them, acknowledging Shay's quiet "Thank you" with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Well, not my most graceful attempt at subtlety, but Frisk is such a sharp young thing there's not much good in beating around the bush with them." She sits down, smoothing her tunic over her knees as she pulls her chair in. "I suppose you've picked up on my... unease at your questions about them."

Shay nods dumbly, splashing sugar into her tea and stirring a little longer than is strictly necessary. Toriel doesn't seem to notice.

"You must understand my concerns, Shay." Toriel takes a delicate sip, the tiny teacup dwarfed in her enormous paws. "When I read over you area of focus I was led to believe that you were applying to study the _history_ of magic. Not applied magics."

"I-" Shay's voice squeaks with nervousness, and she clears her throat awkwardly. "I didn't know that I, ah. That I _could_ study real magic, your majesty. And once I found out, Undyne and Papyrus just kind of... swept me up. It was Undyne who mentioned that Frisk, um. What Frisk can..."

"Frisk's magic, yes." Toriel nods sagely. "Yes. But you must realize, my dear, what I must think when, barely a week after entering the underground you are making a study of my child, and trying to resurrect magics I am told are centuries dead amongst mankind."

Shay pales. "I didn't mean to- oh my god."

"You must realize that mankind's use of magic is what placed my people under these unfortunate circumstances in the first place, and that I must be cautious about sharing this gift once more."

"I- oh no. No, your majesty, I didn't- I don't want to-." Shay cuts herself off with a frustrated whimper, her useless tongue refusing to cooperate.

"Child." Toriel says. She sets her teacup down onto the saucer with a small _clink_ that echoes too loudly in the still room. "I would like you to tell me why you are here."

And suddenly Shay gets it.

This is not a mother whose child's secret has been exposed. This is a Queen who has sensed a danger to her kingdom, to her people. Shay could destroy everything the monsters have built, every tenuous positive connection they've made with humanity in the last year with just a few careless words to the wrong people. She could unearth the secrets that had been used to seal away the monsters in the first place and carry them back to people who would use them again. An enormous risk has been taken in allowing her into the Underground, and now here she is in the palace, trying to study the Queen's own child. Shay is a threat.

She is being allowed a chance to demonstrate otherwise.

Shay doesn't pretend to misunderstand. She takes a careful sip of tea and clears her throat, choosing her words carefully. She keeps her eyes cast downwards in an attempt to stay her nervousness.

"Your majesty, until a year ago... I was a joke. Two hundred years ago they would've thrown me in the nuthouse for trying to study magic history. Two hundred years before that it would have been prison." She picks up her saucer and sets the cup on it, staring down into the amber liquid as she speaks.

"There isn't any magic history, not really. It's all just guesswork and conjecture." She swallows. "The thing you need to realize about humans is that they are totally, completely terrified of what they don't understand. After the war, after the monsters were sealed away, there was no new magic, no new sorcerers. When the last one died there was no one left who understood, and no one who could explain the extraordinary to the common man. People were afraid. Anyone who claimed to have magic was hunted down. The Mage towers were destroyed, the libraries were burned. It was _barbaric._ It was a _waste._ "

The teacup's handle squeaks in quiet protest as her grip tightens. Her knuckles whiten. "I grew up in a world without magic, and I had to live with the knowledge that humanity had done it to themselves. I've spent my whole life asking about magic. My parents taught me to be curious, and ask questions. Everything I knew I had to piece together from scraps. I thought I would die with the closest I had ever come to magic being the journal of a man hundreds of years dead, and the ruins of the great towers. And the whole time the other students mocked me, and only one professor was willing to take me on as a grad student. Except for my parents, he was the only one who didn't think I was crazy. His specialty was magic history too. He'd come to Ebbot University to study the barrier."

She takes another careful sip of tea, her throat suddenly dry. "And then a year ago the barrier fell, and there were monsters. It was the greatest day of my life, except for the day that I was approved for this exchange. I ran up to the university still in my pajamas, straight to my mentors office, and we celebrated and watched the news all day. People kept coming in to talk to us. It felt great at first, to finally be the authority on something, to get some kind of respect. Except after the first few, it became, um, pretty clear that nobody else was as excited as we were."

Finally, she raises her eyes to Toriel's. The Queen is completely still, the expression in her eyes completely unreadable. "They were afraid, and they were coming to us for reassurance. They kept asking what was going to happen, if we were all going to be killed by the monsters pouring out of the mountain. We watched on the television as the military arrived, and the perimeter was set up, and all of the monsters were cordoned off and trapped inside the DMZ. It took us less than a day for the fear to take over."

She sets the cup and saucer down in front of her and grips the edge of the table. Her expression turns pleading.

"Your majesty, I don't want to see any more magic be lost from this world. The only human you really have on your side is Frisk, and they're just a kid. I'm sure you've already figured out how little their word means to my government. But I can help. I _want_ to help. I want to understand, so that I can help humanity understand, so that they won't be afraid."

"It's been less than a week, and I already have friends I want to protect down here, people who deserve more than anything to live on the surface. If there's anything at all I can do to make that happen, I will." She falls silent and bows her head, unable to bear Toriel's silent, evaluating gaze any longer.

Toriel is quiet for a long time. Then, a large, soft paw settles over Shay's hand. Her head snaps up. Toriel smiles at her, warm and a little bit sad.

"My child, I am very sorry to have doubted your intentions. But I can see you understand why I had to ask. You've a bright soul, but that is no guarantee of good intentions." The Queens eyes shadow, and she looks far away for a moment. It occurs to Shay to wonder just how old she is, how long she has carried the weight of her people's safety. But after barely a heartbeat Toriel blinks the film of ages away and looks back at Shay, smiling wanly. "I hope you can forgive my little inquisition, dear."

Shay nods, speechless. Just like that?

"I will not impede your studies in any way. In fact, if you have any questions I may be able to answer, please, ask. My only request is that I may be allowed to read your work before it is submitted." Shay draws in a shaky breath, blinking hard to fight back the tears that threaten at the corners of her eyes. Her system isn't certain how to handle the emotional overload. She had expected caution, warnings, a command to stay away from Alphys, Undyne, and Frisk until she has prove her intentions are good, but this? The monster Queen herself giving her blessing? It's more than she has ever dared hope for.

"Of course, your majesty." She stammers. There's a lump in her throat that's stubbornly getting in the way of her speech. Toriel gives a merry laugh, startling her and shattering the heavy atmosphere.

"Oh my child, there's no need for that. Please, call me Toriel."

She gives Shay's hand one last pat, before pushing back her chair and standing. She waves off Shay's move to get up and turns to kitchen counter, where an odd-looking pie is sitting.

"Here, a peace offering!" She chuckles, cutting two slices and laying them on little plates that match the tea set, then carries them back to the table and sets one in front of Shay.

"It's Frisk’s favorite. My secret recipe!" She winks. Still a bit overcome, Shay mechanically picks up her fork and takes a bite, and instantly forgets what she was so worked up about.

"Oh my god." She immediately takes another bite. "Oh my- This is amazing. What is this?"

Toriel's eyes twinkle as she starts in on her own slice. "Cinnamon butterscotch pie. I've yet to be turned down for seconds. Now come, tell me all about all that's happened this week. I'm sure you must have seen and done so much already, knowing Undyne."

Shay passes the most surreal thirty minutes of her life having tea with the Queen, eating two more pieces of butterscotch cinnamon pie and telling her all about Erin and Papyrus and training with Undyne, and how she still hasn't won a single hand of Pawtucket.

Toriel seems able to switch her queenly persona off at will, and by the time Frisk wanders through the door Shay is so completely at ease she can't quite remember how Toriel had ever seemed intimidating.


End file.
